WORKWAYS 

FOR 

THEME-BUILDING 

(Revised Edition) 


By 

C. H. WARD 


Author of Sentence and Theme, The Junior Highway 
to English, What Is English f 


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WORKWAYS 

FOR 

THEME-BUILDING 

(Revised Edition) 


. 




Ry 


C. H. WARD 


Author of Sentence and Theme, The Junior Highway 
to English, What Is English? 


SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
CHICAGO ATLANTA NEW YORK 




TE\4o^ 

Yteis 

■ 


Copyright 1924 by 
Scott, Foresman and Company 
247.1 


SEP -S 24 


©CU800695 


'V'.'i J 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Part One: The Strategy of Planning a Course. 5 

Section 

1. For Teachers Who Have No Theory of Composition. 5 

2. What ,1s Your Theory of Composition?. 5 

3. Modern Facts about Rhetoric. 8 

4. The Road to Results. 8 

5. Review Is the Foundation of Success. 12 

6. What’s the Use of Grammar?. 14 

7. Planning a Course—The Five Elements. 19 

8. The Lessons for a One-Year Course. 30 

9. The Lessons for a Second-Year Course. 36 

10. Some “Best Devices” for Handling Theme Topics... 38 

Part Two: Comments on the Lessons. 44 


























WORKWAYS 

for 

Theme-Building, Revised 


PART ONE 

THE STRATEGY OF PLANNING A COURSE 

Section 1: For Teachers Who Have no Theory of 
Composition 

In Sections 8 and 9 are definite suggestions as to the 
best order of lessons for different kinds of courses in Theme- 
Building. If you do not care about the reasons for the sug¬ 
gestions, but prefer to take them on trust, skip all the rest of 
Part One. Sections 2-7 are for those inquiring spirits who 
wish to see what underlies a text-maker’s advice. 

Section 2: What Is Your Theory of Composition? 

(The only philosophical section of Workways) 

I was once in conversation with a Commissioner of Edu¬ 
cation who had invited me to speak at a convention of super¬ 
intendents. He was a veteran who had during forty years, 
in two states, directed educational policy. “What,” I asked 
him, “would you most like to have said about this vexed 
problem of composition?” And he replied as follows: 

“I am sure that the greatest need in teaching composi¬ 
tion is that pupils should be interested in the topics assigned. 
I would, for example, urge teachers to use local history and 
to arouse an eagerness for presenting the subjects with zest. 
If pupils are enlisted in such an enterprise, they will write 
well. If they do not like the subjects assigned, their themes 


6 


WORKWAYS FOR 


will be full of errors. I would have no emphasis put on any 
rules or technicalities; I should rely on stimulating interest.” 
That is one theory of composition. It is held by many cap¬ 
tains of education; it is a generous and noble conception; it 
warms the heart; and there is doubtless some truth in it. 

Another theory, more widely held and more esthetic, has 
been thus set forth by a very noted president of a famous 
American university: “There is a theory that the way to 
teach composition is to have pupils write constantly and on 
all sorts of topics. This is a fallacy. The way to teach 
young people how to write good English is to teach them to 
read good English.” That is a beautiful thesis, sanctioned 
by ages of rhetorical authority. It is bolstered by many an 
ancient maxim such as “Give your days and nights to the 
study of Addison”; “Make yourself a sedulous ape of the 
masters,” etc., etc. 

The commissioner and the president would advise against 
the use of any textbook. In the serene regions where they 
live insphered the teaching of composition is a process 
by which ardent idealism kindles divine flame in the eager 
mind of youthful genius. 

From such lofty idealism you may descend through all 
the grades of theory, down to a level where school composi¬ 
tion is regarded as nothing but a drive at minimum essen¬ 
tials. On what stage do you live? If you hold any general 
theory, it is useless to expect the best results from any text¬ 
book until you realize what your position is. You cannot 
plan a course to advantage until you have defined your 
principles to yourself. Then you can see where a text- 
maker’s ideas differ from yours and to what extent they are 
to be disregarded. 

Workways does not invite any teacher to change his the¬ 
ory. It does not set forth any theory, because Theme-Build¬ 
ing is not based on such a foundation. These books simply 
record a practice that has been gradually developed during a 
quarter of a century of work with American students—a 
kind of practice that is very general among experienced 
teachers. If you have a theory of teaching, you will natu¬ 
rally suppose that I have one, and you will look for it and 
expect a conflict with it. Cease looking. Keep your ideal 
and study how it may be adapted to a working program. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


7 


I never could arrive at any such theory as “arousing 
eagerness” or “reading good books,” nor have I ever met any 
successful teacher who worked by such a theory. Every good 
teacher that I know does all he can to arouse eagerness and 
to encourage reading, but he never relies on such pleasures 
to produce results. He depends upon a definite, practical 
program of work. He no more succeeds by inspirational 
devices than an architect rears buildings by playing music to 
bricks and mortar—though he would not deny that Orpheus 
could do all the work with a lyre. He simply admits that 
he is not an Orpheus. 

The age of the lyre seems to have passed. If you still 
have some faith in it, be thankful and lighten your labors 
as much as possible. But be skeptical. Keep an eye on the 
results and see if they are as firm as they should be. Com¬ 
pare your theory with the following statement, which is 
quoted from page 12 of the Pilot Booh for Sentence and 
Theme, Revised, and is the sixth of eight paragraphs about 
“securing results.” 

“Most of our critics, who print exhortation or speak it* 
from platforms, are people who have no practice in the art 
of teaching. They use vague terms.and general assumptions 
which are misleading in the highest degree. They never de¬ 
scend to the minute and discouraging facts of daily life in 
the classroom, where an average teacher deals with average 
pupils who have the average amount of ignorance of rudi¬ 
ments and the average lack of ambition for excellence. Pro¬ 
fessors of literature, editors, administrators—all assume 
insensibly the gifted teacher and the eager pupil; they speak 
in terms of professional attainments, and speak in terms, not 
of means, but of beautiful achievement. They appreciate 
generously the results of such a course as that given in Sen¬ 
tence and Theme, but they are apt to be horrified at the only 
means yet known for reaching the results. They suppose that 
pleasing sentences are secured by dwelling in an esthetic 
atmosphere. The more you study their comments, the more 
you will perceive that this is the case. They sorely mislead 
us by never condescending to the humble means which we 
teachers have to use. A violin is not born of symphonies, but 
is manufactured in a shop where shavings and a glue pot are to 
be seen. Sentence and Theme tries to be a shop for real work.” 


8 


WORKWAYS FOR 


So does Theme-Building try to be a shop. Don’t be 
antagonized by the humble equipment, but adapt it to the 
higher methods and to your particular theory. 

Section 3: Modern Facts about Rhetoric 

Rhetoric has been until very recently a university sub¬ 
ject. It has been a fine art designed for a select body of 
college students who have had a thorough linguistic training 
and who are ambitious to improve the niceties of their style. 
Professors have made textbooks for this select class of ad¬ 
vanced students, and their treatises have been models for 
high-school books. Elementary knowledge has been presup¬ 
posed ; all the rudimentary skills have been assumed as 
matter of course; the ambition and pride and sensitiveness 
of the student have been taken for granted. And the assump¬ 
tions were reasonably true as late as 1890, or even 1900. 

They are now true of only a very small percentage of 
high-school students. I quote from page 14 of the Pilot 
Book: 

“The great change in the conditions of composition has 
come about within forty years, most of it within twenty 
years—too fast for us to keep up with. Any person fifty 
years old was educated in a different world from the one in 
which we now try to teach composition. ‘Why should my 
boy,’ exclaims an irate parent, ‘have to learn punctuation? 
I never had to learn it. I went through college without it.’ 
The answer is very simple: ‘You could not go through a 
good high school now without it.’ That is one little chip to 
show how the current of composition swirls and eddies where 
it never ran before. We teachers have to adjust ourselves 
to an unparalleled revolution in all the technique of an art. 
The method that secured results in 1890 is powerless in 
modern life. We must face the facts as they now are and 
adapt our technique to them.” 

Section 4: The Road to Results 

If a teacher is to fit the young people of today for the 
life that now is, he must adapt himself to the facts of mod¬ 
ern conditions. To old-fashioned or dainty people these 
facts may seem disagreeable. To cheerful dwellers amid 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


9 


things-as-they-are the facts are nowise disturbing. But they 
are peculiar. 

The road to results now runs much more through rudi¬ 
ments than it used to. Indeed the track has changed so far 
and so suddenly that many a middle-aged teacher is placidly 
promenading in the shady lanes of antiquity, while the traf¬ 
fic of composition passes, unknown to him, upon a new and 
crowded highway. Here the sights and sounds are strange; 
to elderly people they may seem uncouth. But here they 
are, as certain as the sedans and trucks of our era. This 
manual is no place for an explanation of the new method of 
minimum essentials, or of all the new technique of teaching 
the elements—for example, the new knowledge of the spelling 
problem or the use of grammar as a rhetorical tool. That 
ground is covered in the Pilot Booh, pages 10-60. Any 
teacher who wishes to understand all these antecedents to a 
course in Theme-Building should apply to the publishers for 
a copy of the Pilot Booh for Sentence and Theme, Revised. 
It will be sent without charge. 

I will present here some sample excerpts, so that you 
may judge whether the Pilot Booh would be of any use. 

Take no advice on trust. “We teachers of English 
should be suspicious of all advice that is offered to us in this 
age of educational revolution. I want every teacher to read 
the following pages with a healthy skepticism and a deter¬ 
mination to try out the statements before accepting them. 
In every case where you are surprised or incredulous remem¬ 
ber that I was once equally incredulous. I was persuaded 
only by the hard knocks of experience, and I record here only 
what experience has taught me.” 

Experience. “I had taught fifteen years before it 
occurred to me to publish anything about teaching composi¬ 
tion. All that while I worked along as a teacher should; 
keeping his eyes on the daily facts, seeing what Jack and 
Bill have failed to understand, and trying to find some way 
to make them understand. I had never so much as seen the 
cover of a pedagogical journal, never knew what an experi¬ 
ment or an investigation was, never had a thought of trying 
to tell anybody anything about teaching. I moiled along in 
a little school, hunting for devices that would start operations 
in the brains of Jack and Bill.” 


10 


WORKWAYS FOR 


The spelling mystery. “I can explain the mystery of 
spelling most vividly by giving a sketch of my own efforts to 
grapple with it. When I began to teach, in 1898, I was 
entirely unconscious that there was any mystery. I trust¬ 
fully dictated 25 words a day from a speller, advancing from 
autumn, yellow, and sword, through sickle, scythe, and 
squirrel, to garrulous, grotesque, and magnanimity . I never 
heard or read a word to show me that I was wasting the 
boys’ time. In 1914 I grew so bold as to formulate the truth 
—obvious enough now at last—in an article for the English 

Journal, called ‘Intensive Spelling’.The student 

who masters 100 forms has skill for mastering all forms. If 
he has the will to go on to a mastery of 300, he pan be cap¬ 
tain of his fate thenceforth. That is education; it is mental 
power. What seemed a dreary little arena of ‘only 300’ 
will be shown by the new knowledge to be a conquest of 
Canaan.” 

The wrong kind of grammar. “Grammar is championed 
for several reasons, all poor: (1) That it ought not to be 
given up hurriedly; (2) that it is good mental training; (3) 
that it informs us about usage; (4) that it enables us to 
speak correctly. The last reason is the one most commonly 

given; yet there is hardly any truth in it.You 

may begin to guess that most of the antagonism to grammar 
is merely a dislike of certain elements that have always been 
the prominent ones in the textbooks of the past. I heartily 
share this dislike. I think that nearly all the study of forms 
and classifications and mechanical rules is worse than useless, 
that it is harmful. There is an entirely different conception 
of grammar, one which I attempted to explain in the School 
Review for April, 1916.” 

Punctuation. “When I emerged from graduate courses 
in English and began to teach in a school, my mind was of 
course all full of West Saxon and Chaucerian pronunciation; 
I had notebooks on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama which 
I thought would dazzle the seniors beneficially; I was stocked 
with gems of criticism and a wealth of literary sources. The 
subject of punctuation was nowhere visible on my horizon. 
But I thought it was well that young men bound for college 
should use periods at appropriate places and should so use 
commas as to ‘express their meaning.’ A very naive, comical 



THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


11 


tenderfoot I appear to myself now as I look back on the 
autumn of 1898 and recall my ignorance of the powers of 
schoolboys. ‘Express their meaning’! I might as well have 
expected them to express their sense of harmony on a pipe- 
organ before they knew the difference between manual keys 

and pedal keys.The fact of experience is that 

such drill teaches variety of forms, secures freedom of expres¬ 
sion, and is in the end a real stimulus to spontaneity.” 

The difficulties of training in diction. “Some time our 
American schools w T ill do a great deal with vocabulary build¬ 
ing. In French schools such training bulks large; it is done 
with a well-developed technique and is effective. I am not 
arguing against vocabulary work; I am only saying that in 
present conditions a teacher should not attempt much of it 
until she has surveyed the dangers and knows the possibility 
of wasting time, unless she has unusual knowledge and skill.” 

Paragraphs. “We have almost no knowledge of how 
authors make paragraphs, but we know a great deal about 
rhetorical recipes for manufacturing paragraphs. For my 
part, I have small faith that results can be secured in the 
ninth or tenth grades by any of these recipes—not even by 
the common one of building from a topic sentence. I have 
never seen in themes any proof that teachers secure notice¬ 
able improvement by teaching paragraph structure as a sep¬ 
arate type of composition. The whole question is subtle and 
involved in controversy; far be it from me to assert that I 
know all about it. I only assert that a teacher should not 
heedlessly take it for granted that good results will come 
from elaborate work with paragraphs. Her chance of suc¬ 
cess in that field is not good.” 

Hitching to the stars. “The teacher who lacks the vision 
and the faith converts our harness into clanking chains. 
Thousands like her have made the essentials odious and have 
caused the fear which echoes in the English Journal. We 
should be grateful to an editor who keeps sounding the alarm 
against the tribe of rabid minimalists. 

“But there is another tribe that does more damage and 
that is much more to be dreaded—the teachers who are impa¬ 
tient of means and expect to hitch to the stars without a 
harness. Some of them may make a showing with the upper 
tenth of a class (though I have never happened to see an 



12 


WOBKWAYS FOB 


example of their success); but they leave the ninety per cent 
in the mire, floundering, abandoned.The mini¬ 

mum essentials are a harness. By themselves they have no 
force, but without them the starry forces will never draw our 
wagons.” 

• Section 5: Review Is the Foundation of Success 

None of us like to use our precious time this year for doing 
last year’s work; we want to progress. Yet, in the present 
status of our education, there is no labor more fruitful than 
making last year’s foundation secure before we try to build 
on it; and no mistake is more disastrous than to assume that 
the foundation is firm. It is much more likely to be soft or 
full of holes. 

Why is last year’s work never done? The answer is not 
pessimistic and is not a charge of incompetence against the 
teachers of certain years. It would appear that our educa¬ 
tional system has grown with such rapidity, has aspired so 
high, and has had to absorb such an increasing body of 
students of decreasing ability, that our teaching has not been 
able to insure a proper degree of thoroughness at any point 
in the line. The blame for low achievement seems not to lie, 
in any large measure, upon us teachers, but upon the material 
with which we deal. Certainly in this era we shall do no 
good if we reproach the teachers in the grades below us with 
not working hard enough. Perhaps a concrete illustration 
from my own small boarding-school will prove something: 
For twelve years I received into a tenth-year class the boys 
prepared by a colleague, and I passed these same boys on to 
the same colleague for their eleventh-year work; I was always 
disappointed because so much review of ninth-year rudiments 
was necessary before I could go ahead with what I thought 
my proper job in the tenth year. Though we compared notes 
and explained what was lacking and did our best to be thor¬ 
ough in the right ways, we could never satisfy ourselves by 
securing adequate preparation. The boys’ minds seemed 
never to have been habituated to right methods of study and 
carefulness; after making our best efforts in the ninth and 
tenth years it was still necessary to take time in the eleventh 
year for stopping the gaps that I had left in knowledge of 
rudiments. We quit finding fault with each other and ac- 



THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


13 


cepted the twentieth-century facts as cheerfully as we could. 

This does not mean that we resigned ourselves to a sad 
fate—by no means. Every-year we made some progress in 
the art of laying surer foundations. We advised each other 
as to what was most needed and strove harder to empha¬ 
size just those points in our teaching. Some such give-and- 
take of advice will be the only way, in any school, of avoiding 
the endless review of matters that are supposed to be taught 
earlier in the curriculum. 

So general is the recognition of this lack of preparation 
in our schools that all recent good lists of minimum essen¬ 
tials demand, as a first requisite for any given year, “Estab¬ 
lishing the matters supposed to be taught in the previous 
year.” The makers of such lists realize the truth stated at the 
beginning of this Section: “Review is the foundation of 
success.” 

To begin with Lesson 1 of Theme-Building and to go 
peacefully on with the improvement of sentences, without 
first discovering whether a review is necessary, would be 
courting defeat in the whole year’s program. In my own 
school I have never met a class that did not need review— 
though every class had been carefully trained. Every time I 
hurried over the necessary review I lost ground. Whenever 
I suppressed my impatience and was thorough in review, I 
achieved a greater total in the year’s results. Though it may 
be that there are teachers who err on the side of too much 
review, I have never heard of one. All the successful teachers 
that I know consider it their sacred duty to review essentials. 
Let me cite an example—a rather extreme one, but typical 
—which I heard from a man who was teaching seniors in a 
large suburban high school of a western city: “I found 
that they did not know letter forms; so I proceeded to teach 
the forms. For two weeks I did hardly anything else.” When 
I asked why seniors should not learn such mechanical mat¬ 
ters in a two-day review, he replied, “I can’t imagine why. 
I just observed that it was so. And I am not going to dis¬ 
grace the school and deceive these students by allowing them 
to graduate without knowing how to write a formal letter.” 
His wisdom seems to me beyond dispute—however harrow¬ 
ing it: may be to give up some senior literature for such a 
rudiment/ Can you quarrel with his notion of duty? 


14 


WORKWAYS FOR 


If the seniors in a certain American graduate school of 
business cannot write decently enough to earn a passing 
mark when judged by freshman standards, they are required 
to qualify themselves, or they lose their degree. (One year 
it was found that two-thirds of these college graduates were 
thus deficient.) If in a certain college of science a senior 
cannot avoid illiterate blunders, he cannot receive a diploma. 
In most of our universities there is now a provision that all 
freshmen who have not mastered high-school elements must 
take a special course, without any credit toward a degree; 
and most universities find that from ten to fifty per cent are 
as woefully lacking as that in junior high-school rudiments. 
These college and graduate-school rulings are proofs of the 
universal truth that every stage in education is a fraud 
unless it demands a mastery of previous stages. If college 
freshmen do not know what a sentence is (and a large fraction 
of them do not know), their instruction is a farce unless 
they first learn, by review, what a sentence is. Much more 
is this true of high-school students. There is no magic in any 
textbook that will remove the primal necessity of reviewing 
when we discover rudimentary ignorance. In many schools 
(among which is my own) the Appendix of Theme-Building 
is the most essential part of the book. (See further in the 
comments on the Anteroom, in Part Two of Workways.) 

Section 6: What's the Use of Grammar? 

Attaining a knowledge of sentences (as urged in Section 
5 and in the Anteroom of Theme-Building) is only one rea¬ 
son for the review of grammar. A teacher who did not 
understand the other reason would find himself unable to plan 
a course in Theme-Building to good advantage. The rest of 
this Section explains the other reason—the rhetorical one. 

The use of grammar for rhetorical purposes is not very 
generally understood. Just recently, for example, I have seen 
a syllabus of studies which, while it urged the need of gram¬ 
mar, gave no reason except that grammar was necessary for 
understanding correct idiom. The reason is doubtful; cer¬ 
tainly it is a very small one. A knowledge of sentence ele¬ 
ments is the only way I have discovered of teaching the 
average literal-minded student how to make his sentences 


THEME-BUILDING (KEVISED EDITION) 


15 


pleasing. I might, if my time were unlimited, show him 
hundreds of examples of prepositions and conjunctions and 
participles, without teaching him any names or any formal 
syntax; and I might thus gradually lead him to subordinate 
his ideas and to use parallel structure in his sentences. If a 
student is far above the average, I can train him by a non¬ 
grammar method. But since I have no extra years for that 
roundabout method, and since the class is not composed of 
specially talented students, I must find a more rational way 
to work. How small my prejudice is for this method and how 
I have to rely on it can be judged from the next paragraph. 

When I originally wrote Theme-Building, I was weary of 
being called a grammar extremist and wished to make a pure, 
uplifting textbook which should not contain any reference to 
the parts of speech. But if I had carried out my desire, I 
could not have talked about the ways of securing variety in 
sentences. It is useless to give an exhortation like “Subor¬ 
dinate your ideas”; the only way to be effective is to use 
such terms as “complex sentences” or “begin with modifiers.” 
Even those terms will remain vague abstractions unless the 
student has a ready understanding of subordinate clauses 
and prepositions. He will never have the understanding until 
he knows about adverbs, adverbial phrases, and adverb 
clauses—and much more. Much as I should like to evade 
grammar, I cannot if I am to do honest teaching. Therefore 
the first edition of Theme-Building depended much on gram¬ 
mar in the part that dealt with sentence-betterment. There 
lias been no escaping grammar in the revised edition. It is 
here because it is the only way yet found of securing results 
economically. I have no more theory about grammar for 
composition than I have about hoeing for vegetables: I dis¬ 
cover that cultivated plants will not flourish without hoeing, 
and I also discover that good results will not grow in sen¬ 
tences without grammar. 

I offer in this paragraph an illustration of the way in 
which many esthetic people shudder at grammar, close their 
eyes to it, but prize the effect. A university professor, who 
had been reading some themes from my school commented 
thus: “Your boys are able to subordinate their ideas and to 
frame pleasing sentences. How do you secure those effects ?” 
I began to tell him about “the parts of speech, first, in order 


16 


WORKWAYS FOR 


to have a ready knowledge of phrases, verbals, and”—but I 
saw that his eyes were drooping and that he thought I had 
switched to some unrelated topic. He had no curiosity about 
the true answer. He would never have credited it. His mind 
would not descend to such a humble, matter-of-fact process. 
No—he expected me to talk about beautiful generalities, like 
“seek to stimulate their ambition for excellence.” Being 
unwilling to bore him and bring myself low in his estima¬ 
tion, I abruptly stopped telling him the facts and put to him 
a question about “subordinating.” The light of interest 
relumed in his eyes, and he then proceeded to tell me about 
the right mode of stimulating ambition for excellence. He 
will never know how the results are achieved, but will abide 
calmly in his literary fancies. 

If you know how to produce improvement by grammar, 
never attempt to tell such a critic about your procedure. He 
will think less of you. Say nothing about the facts of your 
method. Receive his commendations in respectful silence 
and ask him for advice. So doing, you shall acquire merit. 

Any critic of high-school methods, if his ideas have been 
formed in academic bowers, assumes that improvement in 
composition comes from training in the use of words. For 
that supposition there is much warrant. It is true that 
the most noticeable difference between the style of a Steven¬ 
son and the style of an average boy is a difference in vocabu¬ 
lary. Any sensitive reader is hurt by the meager dullness of 
the boy s word-store; he is pleased by the variety and apt¬ 
ness of the diction in any composition written by a gifted 
student. It is this distinction in vocabulary that has always 
received most comment; to this the older generation of rheto¬ 
ricians gave their attention. They were right in so doino- 
for they were addressing a select lot of students, masters of 
Latin syntax, who knew the fundamentals and who were 
polishing their style. For us, today, in the actual conditions 
of American education, the suppositions have hardly any 
basis in fact. We are dealing with the whole multitude "whose 
stylistic foundations have never been laid. We are not put¬ 
ting on a polish; we are trying to make a framework stand 
up. 

If, then, we direct our energies at smoothing and ampli¬ 
fying diction, we shall find ourselves trying to beautify iron 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


17 


with silver-polish. Our proper business is, first, to convert 
the iron to steel girders, and then—not till then—begin to 
consider the marble facing of the structure. 

That means, in plain language, that we shall do most good 
to the greatest number of students, and have most to show 
for our labors, if we give training in the making of sturdy 
and varied sentences. If any student learns the knack of 
framing a variety of well-made sentences, he has made a great 
advance in composition, a noticeable and gratifying advance. 
Every student of average ability can learn that knack. Par¬ 
ents and principals will credit you with skill if you impart 
the ability to cast sentences in the molds of mature and 
agreeable forms. 

This process of sentenee-improvement is begun in Sen¬ 
tence and Theme , but only begun. The first year of work 
in Theme-Building is a strengthening and extending of the 
simple principles—for example: (1) decrease the number of 
compound sentences, (2) begin with adverb clauses, (3) 
begin with phrases, (4) use, in many ways, appositives, (5) 
use verbals, (6) use two verbs with one subject. The nature 
of this sort of work I tried to explain in the Pilot Book, by 
the following illustration: 

“How grammar is an engine for rhetorical purposes can 
be shown best by a comparison of professional skill with 
ninth-grade ignorance. The following pair of sentences from 
Treasure Island will serve the purpose, if we scan them 
closely and make three comments on them. 

We pulled easily, by Silver’s directions, not to weary 
the hands prematurely; and, after quite a long passage, 
landed at the mouth of the second river—that which runs 
down the woody cleft of the Spyglass. Thence, bending 
to our left, we began to ascend the slope toward a 
plateau. 

“Comment 1 . The skill that made those sentences can 
never be taught by any pedagogy—much less by the gram¬ 
mar program—for the skill is partly a matter of the manage¬ 
ment of a large vocabulary, which our students do not pos¬ 
sess: the uses of by and weary and prematurely , the for¬ 
mality of that which and thence and ascend, the knowledge 
of woody and cleft and plateau . Grammar will not convey a 
vocabulary nor an instinct for cadences and Scottish dignity. 


18 


WOKKWAYS FOE 


“Comment 2. But by the path of grammar the student 
may acquire the other elements in Stevenson’s skill—his man¬ 
agement of modifiers for clearness and agreeable variety. 

“Comment 3. A small percentage of our high-school stu¬ 
dents (1 think not above five per cent) have an instinct for 
the management of sentence elements and acquire power by 
familiarity with good models; but the other ninety-five per 
cent have no such instinct, and after a four-year course in 
literature will write with an unchanged, monotonous crude¬ 
ness. (Compare the deliberate judgment of the freshman 
English faculty of the University of Wisconsin: ‘The vast 
majority of our high-school pupils are not accustomed to such 
intellectual habits as might enable them to “absorb” from their 
reading the knowledge necessary to a correct use of English. 
Direct technical instruction in English is impracticable ex¬ 
cept upon the basis of a genuine familiarity with the ele¬ 
mentary facts of English grammar.’) They can learn an 
author’s tricks of management only if they are shown step 
by step, detail after detail, what an author is doing when 
he builds an agreeable form of sentence. 

“If the ordinary untrained ninth-grade pupil is asked to 
describe the same situation in American words, he will pro¬ 
duce something like this: 

Parker told us not to tire ourselves, so we pulled eas¬ 
ily on the oars. We landed at the mouth of the second 
stream that runs down the gully from Nob Hill after 
about an hour and we turned to our left there, we began 
to climb the trail toward Moosehead. 

“What are the ways in which the student’s syntax differs 
from Stevenson’s? 

1. The student does not know when he has reached the end 

of a sentence. 

2. He begins each sentence with the subject and follows it 

immediately with the verb. 

3. He relies on the compound and the simple sentence. 

4. He uses no appositive construction. 

5. He does'not use participles in place of verbs. 

6. He does not use an infinitive of purpose. 

7. He does not take advantage of prepositional phrases. 

8. He allows phrases to come in clumsily at the wrong part 

of the sentence. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


19 


9. He has no knowledge of whether modifiers are restrictive 
in meaning, and so gives the idea that there are two 
streams where there is only one. 

10. He does not use one subject for two verbs. 

11. He does not indicate the major divisions of a sentence. 

12. Any experienced teacher can tell from this brief sample 

of writing that all the pages of the student’s themes 
will be of the same dreary uniformity; not one of 
Stevenson’s devices will ever by any chance slip into 
the themes. There will never be a question to relieve 
the monotony, never an imperative, never some words 
between the subject and the verb, never a goodly ger¬ 
und, seldom an adverb clause at the beginning of a 
sentence, hardly ever a pleasant adverb or preposition 
in that strategic position, rarely a series of similar 
elements to compact an impression. No—this poor 
student knows no grammar. 

“When he has covered the long road, what has he been 
enabled to substitute for the childish, sprawling sentences that 
he once wrote? He can produce something of this sort even 
if we suppose that there has been only one improvement in 
his vocabulary: 

We pulled easily on the oars, according to Parker’s 
directions, not to tire ourselves; and, after about an hour, 
landed at the mouth of the second stream—the one that 
runs down the gully from Nob Hill. Then, turning to 
our left, we began to climb the trail toward Moosehead. 

“This pair of sentences may be bare enough compared with 
the arabesques that are in professional work, but they are 
beautiful compared with his sentences before he had been 
over the grammar road.” 

Section 7: Planning a Course—The Five Elements 

I should prefer not to write this Section, because we must 
all teach according to our own lights and personalities, and 
advice is apt to seem presumptuous. Be assured that I offer 
suggestions with all proper diffidence and with no wish to 
persuade anyone to alter his mode of work. I address only 
such teachers as are not sure of their ideas and wish to 
experiment. 



20 


WORKWAYS FOR 


Your year’s work will consist of five elements: (1) some 
review of the mechanics of spelling and punctuation, (2) 
sentence-betterment, (3) paragraphs, (4) oral composition, 
(5) written composition. I will comment on each element. 

1. Mechanics. The majority of our college freshmen 
today are weak in spelling, punctuation, and sentence-struc¬ 
ture. Presumably most classes using Theme-Building are 
weak in those respects. Presumably your first and most 
important duty is to clean up these forms of ignorance by 
review and by perpetual vigilance. Do not regard that state¬ 
ment as merely the belief of one text-maker; it is the almost 
unanimous opinion of good teachers in every sort of American 
school. Most principals and most sensible parents will com¬ 
mend you more heartily for rooting out elementary errors 
than for an attempt to cultivate the graces while the errors 
flourish. And rooting out errors may be the most noticeable 
part of your work. If “noticeable” seems a rather low-minded 
appeal to self-advertising, reflect upon the following state¬ 
ment: Grubbing out habitual errors is probably the best 
service you can render to the intellects and morals of your 
students. 

It is “probably” the best. It will not be if a teacher loses 
his sense of proportion, or if he becomes engrossed in scalp¬ 
hunting for misspellings and comma-sentences, or if he loses 
sight of the guiding principle, “Set yourself free.” 

Hence I have always found that I succeeded best in plan¬ 
ning my own course in Theme-Building if I emphasized at 
the outset the necessity of overcoming fixed wrong habits. 
The engine for this operation is the Appendix. If any class 
has not mastered the “demons” of spelling, I refer it (or 
such members as need the training) to the spelling lists. I 
have never assigned, an entire lesson in spelling, though that 
would be the right move if a class had had, during previous 
years, very little spelling drill in the few hundred common 
words commonly misspelled. For detailed explanations of 
the spelling problem, if you have to wrestle with it in your 
class, see the Pilot Book for Sentence and Theme, Revised. 

If I find that comma sentences and heedless punctuation 
are general, I know that there is no way to health in my 
composition class except to assign a review of at least the 
fundamental rules in the Punctuation Group of the Appendix. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


21 


If the ignorance is confined to a few, I require those few to 
bring themselves up to standard. The punctuation rules are 
grouped in order of direct importance. A teacher can set a 
whole class right by requiring that the first two or three 
of these rules shall be scrupulously observed in the first 
written theme, that these rules and two or three more shall 
be scrupulously observed in the second theme, and so on. 
In this way a class is not distracted by a general responsibility 
that amounts to nothing, but is held to a limited responsibility 
which is felt to be reasonable. A teacher is not obliged to 
correct all sorts of errors from the outset, but only those 
which are violations of recent and emphatic teaching. This 
concentrating of effort and building the idea of responsibility 
are ways of bringing careless students into line and making 
them realize the reasonableness of decency in sentences. 

If my course is to aim at sentence betterment, and if I 
am to follow the grammar road, the class must know all the 
fundamentals of syntax—that is, of what words aie doing 
in sentences.” I shall have small use for paradigms and 
classifications; I need a knowledge of the functions of words. 
If I talk to a class that is only hazily conscious of what an 
appositive is, I cannot make any impression upon them by 
my efforts to introduce appositives into their style, bo it 
I "find an ignorance of appositives or clauses or gerunds or 
prepositions (and I always do find it), I assign review 
lessons in those subjects until they become alive and respon¬ 
sive in the minds of the class. 

If any class feels that it has “had” grammar and ought 
not to go back over the ground again, it may be good tact 
to assume that the opinion is right, to assign one or two oi 
the first lessons, and to convict some of the better students 
of not knowing enough grammar to understand a program ot 
variety in sentences. Then there could not be any sensible 

protest against a review. , . , 

Such is my conception of the first and most important eie- 
' ment in successful planning of a course: to keep m the front 
of my mind the need of using the Appendix, to fight down 
old errors, to freshen the knowledge needed for rhetorical 
advance, and never to grudge the time needful for all such 

I must try to bring home the nature of this first element 


22 


WORKWAYS FOR 


by showing how high it reaches in all teaching of composition. 
Ask any experienced teacher of college composition what 
standard of attainment he thinks essential for an entering 
freshman. He will not answer in terms of graceful style, 
or even of force and clarity; for he knows from sad experi¬ 
ence that such a demand would be far above what he has a 
right to expect. Indeed he will be very unlikely to speak in 
terms of style. He yearns merely for a little plain knowl¬ 
edge of how to spell simple words, how to make real sentences 
(even if not pleasing), and how to build somewhat respect¬ 
able paragraphs. He asks no more than could be secured by 
using Sentence and Theme year after year, and this modest 
hope is not fulfilled. Business men who have an interest in 
composition ask no more of high-school graduates than the 
colleges ask, and their low standards are not met. Any 
teacher who fails to establish the humble essentials is false 
to the coming generation. If any teacher did no more than 
establish them he would be a blessing to a community. 

“Mismanaged Parts of Sentences” (Lessons 32-36) is mate¬ 
rial that is intermediate between the Appendix and the other 
lessons. This Group 1 of the Second Division is a treatment 
of the most usual blunders in syntax. Few are the classes 
that do not need it, and need it as fundamental exercise in 
clearing their compositions of elementary error. I treat this 
Group as a kind of Appendix material, to be assigned for 
review as occasion arises, to be dwelt upon, and to be used 
for specific reference by backward or careless students. Since 
it is concentrated matter, I assign it in as small lots as pos¬ 
sible, preferably a page or two at a time in connection with 
other lessons. 

2. Sentence-betterment. My own program is to follow 
pretty much the arrangement of the book—that is, to take 
the first eight Lessons on sentences in one, two, three order 
just as they stand, with only as much interspersing of para¬ 
graphs and whole compositions as is necessary for setting up 
the general composition requirements. There is some danger 
in that program for a teacher who likes the minutiae of 
sentences, who is glad of an excuse for dwelling upon them, 
and who is not ambitious to develop themes. For any 
other type of teacher there is no danger that I am aware 
of. Lessons 9 and 10 are distinctly more advanced in their 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


23 


nature; not that they are much more difficult, but that they 
deal with a more rhetorical and decorative subject. Forward 
students will absorb and apply them with ease; backward 
students will never be artists enough to absorb them without 
much additional training and application work. Postpone 
these two Lessons until the spirit moves you. But use early 
in the year and use .vigorously Lessons 1-8. 

I should not use the Supplementary Lessons on Sentences 
(37-39) except with an A section or in a second year of 
work. (For hints about a two-year course see Section 9.) 

I have found that classes which have been through much 
exercise in avoiding compound sentences will inevitably 
gather the idea that a compound sentence is, in itself, a poor 
kind. The book frequently asserts that “and” sentences are 
useful—if only for variety—and that even a “so” sentence 
would not be objectionable if it was unusual (see Lowell’s 
sentence on page 25) ; but this truth will not be understood 
unless a teacher gives it added emphasis. The wrong impres¬ 
sion will not, however, do much harm, because practically 
all students will still employ more than enough compound 
sentences, even after a long campaign against them. I have 
never happened to see a boy injured by over-emphasis upon 
the need of complex and longer simple sentences. 

3. Paragraphs. How peculiar the paragraph problem 
is and how far we are from any solution of it will appear 
from this one example: A teacher whose skill I have lauded 
more than once in print, whose experience is longer than 
mine, and whose total of useful work for her city merits a 
monument—this woman has a rule for the whole city system 
of written composition that no paragraph is to be less than 
150 words in length. And I have no doubt that she succeeds 
with this program—utterly at variance as it seems with all 
the paragraph lessons in Theme-Building . Her mind is per¬ 
fectly clear as to what she is about. She is not teaching the 
facts of paragraph-making in literature, and she knows that 
she is not. Her aim is something quite different and entirely 
wise, an aim that I have tried to hold through all of the 
advice in Theme-Building. It is this: “Whenever you com¬ 
pose, feel responsible for structure She has learned to 
stimulate that responsibility by not accepting any tiny para¬ 
graph or any paragraph of moderate length, and by insist- 


24 


WORKWAYS FOR 


ing that every paragraph shall furnish exercise in the real 
composing of several sentences into a unified structure. Every 
such effort is excellent training. The student who has met 
such requirements for four years is educated in composition 
and can easily learn to make the shorter paragraphs that are 
usual for variety in long compositions. This teacher’s clearly 
defined purpose will win results. Almost any sane purpose, 
if it is temperately applied and carried out firmly, will give 
a student the sense of structure in whatever he writes—and 
that is true training in composition. 

My own practice with paragraphs is to imitate the facts 
that authors show us—a policy which is also clearly defined 
and which is known to be effective. I should not encourage 
the vagaries of some literary paragraphing, any more than I 
tolerate the occasional sentence-errors of authors; for our 
business in school is to learn what is normal and usual. But 
I never object to a one-sentence paragraph—or even to a 
one-word paragraph—if a student shows that he really 
designed that sort of emphasis and would defend it when 
questioned. 

All authors, so far as I can discover, have felt that a 
paragraph is a division-point in a continuous progress. They 
have seldom made paragraphs as separate compositions. That 
fact is no proof that the best teaching will be done by imitat¬ 
ing authors, since school methods often have to be very 
different from professional standards. (See “Literary models 
may mislead” in the Index.) For example, sentence-errors 
are not errors in literature, but our easiest and most effective 
school method is to class them as the worst of all blunders 
until a student has shown that he has an author’s knowledge 
of what he is about. Yet, even in the case of sentence-errors, 
I have always felt a strong pressure from the more skilful 
students to be allowed professional license; and I was always 
somewhat ill-at-ease until I learned a way to grant this free 
dom to boys Avho deserved it. In the case of paragraphs I 
should be still more uneasy if I set up a school taboo that 
was so constantly and with artistic purpose defied by all 
authors. I should always be subjected to a bombardment of 
protest from students. I feel much more secure in a method 
that allies itself with the authors instead of seemin<* to defy 
them. ° 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 25 

Do not adopt my notions of teaching paragraphs. I might 
say, paradoxically, that I have not adopted them myself. I 
am still looking for a better approach to the subject, am 
trying to keep my mind open to new hints. Watch for any 
devices by which your own personality can convey skill in 
paragraphing. Depart from the book as often and as far 
as you feel conviction. But make sure that the conviction 
is not based on some mere prejudice or preconception which 
has formed unconsciously in your mind. We are all prone 
to allow some such theory to harden until it seems a valid 
truth. We must strive to fasten attention on students and 
to observe, with all our powers of sympathy, what effect 
we are producing on them. 

So much for generalities about the teaching of paragraphs. 
I will next indicate what seems to me the relative importance 
of the different lessons on paragraphing. 

Suppose that your class is not above average ability and 
that it is beginning its first year of work in Theme-Building . 
Lesson 11 is, during the first half of the year, worth all the 
rest. It gives the groundwork and the essential ideas. The 
Exercise is the most directly useful kind that I could ever 
invent, for it shows, by actual handling of concrete examples, 
what a paragraph is—that a paragraph is a subjective affair, 
a way in which an author shows his purpose, and that points 
of division are often debatable. “What reason can you give?” 
is the clue to acceptable paragraphing. I have seen some 
boys gain, in one recitation, a great advance in understanding 
of paragraphs from the one passage called the “The death 
of my uncle.” Indeed I have learned much myself from 
that one passage; I have learned that publishers and editors 
have several times reparagraphed it, doubtless with good 
reasons, and very likely with effects that would not have 
offended Irving. A paragraph is not a fixed necessity; it is 
a variable unit. 

Next in importance, so far as my experience shows, is 
Lesson 13, because it strikes directly at the two opposite 
faults which have been shown by the Exercise of Lesson 11— 
namely, paragraphs that are too long or too short for unity. 
That distinction seems in practice, however vague and un¬ 
worthy it might appear to an artist, to be the most fruitful 
one we can make. If a student once grasps the principle of 


26 


WORKWAYS FOR 


Lesson 11 (“I wish to show an important change of topic”), 
and if he then learns in Lesson 13 that important changes 
cannot come often in one short theme, he has a good prelimi¬ 
nary understanding. I should be quite willing to go through 
the fall term with those criteria, recurring to them and 
enforcing them; the other lessons are not so fundamental. 
For my own use the nine Lessons on paragraphs rank about 
in this order of importance: 11, 13, 12, 14, 15, 16, 41, 40, 42. 

More detailed comment on the paragraph Lessons will be 
found in Part Two; see the section devoted to each lesson. 

4. Oral composition. Oral composition is the most 
praised, the most feared, and the most debated subject in 
the curriculum. Feeling for and against it runs high. 
Assumptions about its value run from zero to a hundred per 
cent. So be wary of allowing any convictions to crystallize 
in your mind; wait for experience to show where the truth 
lies for you. No question in connection with the use of a 
textbook is more variously answered; none is more impor¬ 
tant to a teacher who wishes to plan wisely. Instead of pre¬ 
suming to give my own analysis I will offer testimonies from 
various sources. 

(a) During the decade before 1924 oral composition has 
been held up with almost unanimous approval by schools of 
education, by principals, supervisors, and by most textbooks. 
Objections to oral or cautions against it have hardly been 
seen in the pedagogical journals. Everywhere there has been 
cordial approval and high hope. That is important evidence. 

(b) It has been universally believed (at least I have not 
seen an exception in print) that oral presentation is the 
natural preliminary to a written form, and that oral there¬ 
fore deserves more time than written in the lower grades, as 
a preparation for the art of writing. 

(c) A book of advice for teachers of English, published 
in 1923, contains these two sentences near the beginning of 
a chapter on “Ability to Write”: 

“There has been a shifting of emphasis during several 
years until now the teaching and practice of writing have to 
be justified. The importance of spoken English has been 
more and more widely recognized.” 

Tim same author, in his next chapter, on “Ability to 
Speak, entitles the first paragraph “Increasing importance 
of speech,” and says: 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


27 


“The world at large has developed a new consciousness of 
the power of the spoken word. . . . Schools must provide for 
developing ability to speak.” 

Yet a composition textbook issued within a few months 
of the same time, written by a successful veteran of the public 
schools who has emphasized oral work, contains no reference 
to oral in its index and makes only a few casual references 
to any distinction between oral and written. 

(d) There is no question that oral composition has been 
favored by some teachers because it does not furnish a bundle 
of themes to correct. Comment is unnecessary, but a little 
pondering is recommended. 

(e) The greatest argument in favor of oral is the one 
given on page 338 of Theme-Building : “We speak much more 
than we write.” It is contended that if we speak a thousand 
times as much as we write, a school should devote at least 
twice as much time to oral as to written themes. This may 
be true. Also it may be false. Consider the following parallel 
logic and see whether you think it bears on the question: 
“Since honesty is a thousand times as important as a knowl¬ 
edge of arithmetic, a school should assign twice as much 
time to honesty in its curriculum as to arithmetic.” All 
depends on the possibility of securing extremely precious 
results by curricular methods. 

(f) Much of the benefit derived from oral composition— 
in fact most of the benefit that is generally talked about—is 
not a matter of “composition.” It is correcting of speech 
errors, improving voice quality, feeling at ease before an 
audience. Every such improvement is a priceless boon, but 
it is not “composition.” Reflect also that priceless boons are 
not conferred easily. Take stock of the arduous and pro¬ 
longed labor necessary to insure any lasting improvement 
in an ordinary pupil’s diction or voice quality. Consider 
also how repugnant to any real boy are the vocalizing subtle¬ 
ties attempted by many instructors in public speaking. A 
writer in the English Journal of May, 1924 (a man who has 
always been in the van of forward-lookers in public-school 
work) says, “And I think I must include among the silly 
teachers the professionally trained elocutionists.” 

(g) A professor in a western agricultural college once 
asked me, when speaking of his boy’s English work in the 
public school, “What is this oral composition? My boy says 


28 


WORKWAYS FOR 


he just has to get up and spiel awhile. I don’t see what he 
learns.” This man was not in a fault-finding mood, for he 
is a teacher himself and knows how student testimony is to 
be distrusted; he was seeking light. A whole-hearted public 
servant, a principal of a good high school in a western city, 
a man who believes in the value of oral, once told me that 
only one-third of his teachers had sufficient skill to avoid 
wasting time in handling oral themes. This man conceived 
that oral composition requires of a teacher much more skill 
than written, and that only a small percentage of teachers 
have, as yet, developed their technique beyond the danger- 
point. 

(h) The teachers of France and England have not devel¬ 
oped anything comparable to our oral themes, yet those 
nations presumably have a higher standard of speech than 
we have. This is matter for reflection. 

(i) A woman who has for many years taught in school 
and college in a western state, expressed herself thus in the 
English Journal of December, 1923: 

Educational fashions come and go almost as quickly as short 
skirts and comic songs. ... A number of years ago the subject 
for discussion at English conferences was the value of the oral 
theme. . . . Nowadays one hears comparatively little about oral. 
composition. ... I can see how a conscientious teacher might feel 
that oral composition is a lazy waste of time. ... 1 have, of course, 
seen a class of students ready to graduate from the high school 
who, having had oral composition work for four years, show decided 
improvement in ease of manner and fluency of diction; I have never 
seen any marked improvement in clearness of thought or orderly 
arrangement of material in oral themes. 

Every user of Theme-Building should understand that 
the book will be abused unless every oral assignment made 
from it is aimed to secure what this teacher says she has 
never seen—marked improvement in orderly arrangement 
of material. (See “Structure” in the Index.) If oral com¬ 
position cannot aid in developing coherent structure, it is 
worse than a waste of time; it is an incitement to being 
slipshod. 

Take the testimonies for what they are worth. They are 
not offered with a view to persuading you that oral work 
is a wrong kind of effort, but only to caution you of the ruin 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


29 


that may overtake a teacher who has no suspicion of danger. 
If you know the answers to the doubts that are expressed, 
and if you wish to use half your time for oral composition, 
you will find that Theme-Building stands ready to aid you. 
Oral treatment is suggested somewhat more often than writ¬ 
ten ; the benefits of oral are displayed; the superiority of 
oral is explained *in two places. Theme-Building is written 
for the teacher who is sure of his ground in this subject. If 
any teacher has doubts and expects to depend more on writ¬ 
ing, he need not be misled by the frequent prominence given 
to oral. 

For cautions about the frequency of themes—that is, not 
assigning a composition because a suggestion for one bobs 
up in a book—see the first paragraph of Section 8 and see 
the comments on the first Theme Suggestion. 

5. Written composition. Unless you belong to a small 
and very gifted minority of teachers who work in favorable 
conditions, you will find that the surest way of developing a 
sense of structure in composition is by relying on the written 
form. And all our work is vain from now on, through school 
and college, unless we do cultivate a sense of structure. A 
written theme is a record; its faults of structure can be 
pointed out and remedied. If an oral theme is vivid in the 
mind of both teacher and student, if the teacher is quick and 
exact and resourceful in criticizing what has been spoken, 
and if the student is eagerly attentive and anxious to learn 
how to improve—then valuable lessons in unity and coherence 
can be taught by an oral method. Otherwise, and for most 
of us most of the time, the written form is the medium in 
which we shall be most likely to work with economy and 
assurance. 

If I wished to make most progress in the architecture 
of oral composition, I should not begin with speaking. I 
should first design a written plan. I should insist that no 
spoken theme can succeed unless it is planned as carefully 
as if it were to be written. My inclination would always be 
to start from the written plan and the written theme, to 
show that what is spoken must be built by the same pattern 
as what is written. Perhaps this would seem wrong-end- 
foremost to a psychologist. A teacher’s only response is that, 
in practice, the visualized and concrete model of a written 


30 


WORKWAYS FOR 


form furnishes a guide to the oral structure. We can appeal 
to a model that is objective and can convince students that 
a guide for oral structure is the architecture with which 
they are familiar on paper. We can work from the written 
to the oral; I do not know how architecture can be derived 
from oral for written. 

All the Suggestions try to impress the idea that there 
is no distinction in structure between oral and written forms. 
The student’s chief responsibility in all work of either kind 
is to improve his power of building. The name of Theme- 
Building means something. 

If we regard every assignment of a theme as a definite 
effort to improve structure, we shall not assign any topic 
lightly and shall not suppose that any of the miscellaneous 
offerings of a textbook will suit our purpose any week. We 
shall try to frame some program of topics, choosing from 
the book what suits, or (much better) finding the right topics 
in our own school and common life. The theme-topics given 
in the book are purposefully arranged, so that a teacher who 
had no initiative might follow them for two years, or three: 
there is a series of the different types of composition, running 
from stories through narratives of fact, description, and 
exposition to argument; then there is a similar series of 
better ^ themes, and a third series of “more ambitious 
themes.” This is, in a general way, a normal kind of program 
for any school to follow. But every school should devise 
its own plans if possible and use a book to supplement them. 


Section 8: The Lessons for a One-Year Course 

No good textbook can be a prescription for any particular 
school; it is a magazine of material to supply many kinds of 
schools. It can be used to good advantage only by a teacher 
who plans to select what he most needs. The first step in 
preparation for the selection is to estimate the number of 
lessons. To begin at the beginning, without forethought, to 
take each lesson as it comes, to go as far as time permits, and 
then to stop—that is destroying a course. If some school 
be " of peculiar conditions, had only thirty days to spend 
with the book, its choice of lessons and the order of taking 
them would be very different from the choice and the order 
for a sixty-lesson course. 


THEME-BUILDING (KEVISED EDITION) 


31 


Estimating the number of lessons is not so simple a 
process as it appears to be. Suppose that some novice 
expected to use the book three days a week for 35 weeks; 
that amounts to 105 lessons. She would find only 58 
“Lessons” in the table of contents, and might exclaim, “The 
book is hardly more than half big enough!” If you think 
that such a case is too ludicrous to be possible, you are not 
familiar with all the strange revelations that come to a text- 
maker. I can testify for myself that nothing in a year’s 
work is more difficult than to estimate how much of a book 
I can cover in 30 or 60 or 90 days. 

It is generally true in my own case, and I suppose most 
teachers find it so, that a set of lessons in prospect seems 
only a half or a third as long as when I look back on them. 
I always count too easily and generously, forgetting that 
some lessons will not be well learned and must be repeated, 
that a lesson which seems to be mastered this week will appear 
to be forgotten ten weeks hence and will have to be reviewed, 
that the number of days I count on is always being reduced 
by interruptions and interferences, that a “Lesson” in a book 
may occupy two or three or even five of my days if unex¬ 
pected difficulties arise, that I often need to clinch a par¬ 
ticularly useful lesson by spending extra days Avith added 
exercise. Greater than any of these causes of slowing up 
is the necessity (especially early in the year) of stopping 
to teach last year’s rudiments. Very seldom do I go faster 
than I had expected at any point; almost invariably I am 
being retarded. And I ha\'e learned that going sloAA T ly is 
almost a sure sign that I am planning well; hurrying to keep 
up Avith a predetermined schedule never has paid me. Hence 
I cheerfully anticipate that Avhat looks, at first sight, like 50 
lessons in a textbook may spread over 100 or 125 days. 

Perhaps you will not be allowed to go as sIoaaTv as your 
judgment directs. That is a second important consideration. 
Are you obliged to “cover ground”? Perhaps some uniform 
requirements for a city course oblige you to keep moving 
through a set of lessons, regardless of their not being mas¬ 
tered. Perhaps a principal or a university inspector will 
think better of you if you can report that you have “covered 
so much ground” in nine months. Take into account any 
such local necessity. 


32 


WORKWAYS FOR 


When you have guessed as well as you can at the number 
of lessons 3 m u will wish to assign in Theme-Building during 
the year, realize that the estimate is subject to change; it will 
help you to start right, but must not be allowed to interfere 
with the moves that you find you ought to make as you become 
better acquainted with what the class needs. If in the third 
week you discover some unexpected weakness that bids fair 
to alter your plan considerably, and if in the sixth week this 
alteration is three times as great as you supposed it would 
be, there is no reason for feeling blue. Indeed you should 
feel encouraged, because you are probably adapting your 
efforts to what the students most need. Have no fears. But 
look ahead to see where the changing plan is taking you. 
What effect will it cause in the number and type of Lessons 
you are to select from the book? 

Suppose, to be concrete, that you are to have 5 periods 
of English a week for 35 weeks, that 2 periods a week are 
in literature, 1 period for composition, and 2 periods for 
Theme-Building assignments; and suppose that you are free 
to follow' your own judgment in selecting the lessons. Unless 
the class has had exceptionally good training during the past 
two years or is an A section (that is, a selected lot of the 
best students), you might make a preliminary estimate of 
this sort: review in the Appendix, 10 lessons; Mismanaged 
Parts, 7 lessons; sentences, 15 lessons; paragraphs, 7 lessons; 
whole compositions, 15 lessons; unexpected losses for review, 
holidays, etc., 7 lessons—total 61. Don’t v’orry about adding 
9 to the total; the 9 will be needed several times over before 
the year is ended. Don’t feel obliged to live up to every 
item in your list. The list is not to control you, but to keep 
you advised of how the year’s total is building itself as you 
adjust to each discovery of weakness. 

A detailed map of an illustrative course would be the 
laughing-stock of experienced teachers and poison for novices, 
because some self-distrustful beginners w'ould adopt it instead 
of keeping their eyes open to their owm students. It mav, 
however, interest some teachers to see an example of the kind 
of selection that might be made by some teacher somew r here. 
Assume that he has the expectation, outlined above, of 70 
book lessons. 

The first recitation period might be used for reading 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


33 


aloud the Prolog about Helen Keller and the Anteroom on 
page 3, and then 20 minutes could be allowed for writing out 
answers to the Test on page 4. (Save your time by requir¬ 
ing that each answer shall first say “Sentence” or “Not a 
sentence.” You can then check results very quickly without 
reading any more of the answers than you need, for sampling 
the kinds of ignorance in your class.) The latter part of 
the period could be spent in reading and discussing pages 
5 and 6. Lesson 1 is assigned, and the class is dismissed. 

You have taken pains to convey to the class the impression 
that the Test will prove rather easy for them. When you 
examine the papers, you find that ignorance is moderate or 
rather prevalent or shocking. You do not tell the class that 
they are miserable sinners who are to be punished, but you 
tell them that they are to be rescued and set on the road to 
freedom; you hear the recitation on and sentences; then you 
set a lesson for the next day in verbs, or verbals, or relative 
clauses—depending on the amount and kind of weakness 
revealed by the Test. 

For the fourth day you do not continue the grammar 
labor, but explain that the regular, advanced, rhetorical work 
of the year is going to go forward as fast as possible; the 
work assigned is the study of the text of Lesson 11 and the 
writing out of the first part of the Exercise. You plan the 
fourth period so that after a discussion of the text and 
examples there will be time left for clearing up some hazy 
grammar points. Perhaps the fifth lesson will be another 
review in grammar; and the sixth might be Lesson 17 (with 
the first Exercise), which is the best general principle to 
guide in writing the first theme of the year. Since sand¬ 
wiching of subjects is good policy, the seventh lesson might 
be a return to grammar. 

The eighth day could well be spent with Lesson 2. Here 
are obvious proofs that the year’s improvement in style can 
never be effected without grammar. Roosevelt used gerunds 
to make his speech different from a child’s; he used infinitives 
in apposition—how many in the class ever did that? How 
many ever joined two relative clauses by and f How many 
ever employed Kipling’s construction of putting between 
dashes such a participle as “in the zeal of youth forgetting” ? 
How many ever built up such a set of adverb clauses as is 


WORKWAYS FOR 


shown near the top of page 22 ? Oh, there is no make-believe 
about grammar; it is the stuff that better sentences are made 
of. Take advantage of any interest shown or any puzzlement 
expressed, and have, for the ninth day, a recitation on the 
subject, or one that will lead up to it. Be sure that the class 
realizes the goal—a knowledge of the three kinds of verbals, 
of prepositional phrases, of clauses, of appositives. Nearly 
all manipulating of sentences for better style is carried out 
with those kinds of words and constructions. A class will 
be in much better spirits if it sees that the objective is limited, 
definite, for a purpose that appears plainly in the pages that 
they are shortly to study. 

At about this point (or a little earlier) could come Lesson 
18, on constructing a story, if that is to be the type of the 
first theme, or Lesson 21 in preparation for a narrative. The 
eleventh day could be spent with Lesson 3, and the twelfth 
with Parts 2 and 3 of the Exercise of Lesson 11. 

Sometimes students dislike the skipping about in a book; 
but I have never found that their objections went deep if 
they felt sure a teacher knew why he skipped. A composi¬ 
tion text must contain several unrelated kinds of materials, 
which must be kept in distinct parts of the book for the con¬ 
venience of teachers in assigning whatever is needed. It is 
possible in Theme-Building to do a minimum of skipping 
(if a minimum is desired) by taking the lessons of each Part 
in just the order in which they come. There would then be 
no skipping within any Part. 

The teacher we have been imagining would now be under 
way in each line of work—Appendix review, sentences, para¬ 
graphs, whole compositions. Throughout the year his task 
will be to keep the four subjects abreast of each other. He 
will often find, after driving four-in-hand a while, that he 
had better let three subjects rest while he rides the fourth 
some distance by itself. If there are book recitations five 
times a week, four-in-hand work can be carried on without 
too long interruptions of any one subject; but if there are 
only two a week, interruptions between, say, two lessons in 
paragraphs may be so long as to interfere with consecutive 
teaching. In fact I should always prefer to carry on one 
subject at a time if it were not for one great objection: the 
teaching of the lessons is to be applied to the compositions, 


T HEME - BET LDING (REVISE I> ED IT ION) 


and I have never found it feasible to concentrate on sentence 
lessons for six weeks while application to paragraphs and 
themes was left out of account. 

No one would wish me to carry on my suppositions about 
the first twelve days to the thirteenth and the forty-seventh 
and the seventieth days, but there may be a few teachers 
who would like a conspectus of the Lessons that would nat¬ 
urally be chosen for such a 70-day course. The number after 
the dash indicates the number of days that might be used 
for the lesson by a good class that did not have trouble; the 
total number of days thus indicated is smaller than the aver¬ 
age class, if thoroughly taught, would have to use. 


APPENDIX 

verbals, 2 
prepositions, 1 
subordinate clauses, 4 
counterfeit sentences, 3 


WHOLE 


COMPOSITIONS 

WORDS 

.LESSON 

LESSON 

17-3 

30-4 

18-2 

31-1 

21-1 


22-1 


23-1 


24-2 


25-1 


26-1 


27-2 


28-2 


29-2 



SENTENCES 

PARAGRAPHS 

LESSON 

LESSON 

1-1 

11-3 

2-1 

12-1 

3-1 

13-2 

4-1 

14-1 

5-1 

15-1 

6-1 

16-1 

7-1 

. 

8-2 



MISMANAGED 

PARTS 

10 


The list accounts for a total of 61 lessons—quite enough 
for a preliminary chart of operations. If any teacher who 
followed the list found that he had covered that amount of 
ground thoroughly in 60 days, he would be peculiarly for- 


36 


WORK WAYS FOR 


tunate. Most of us would have to have two or more addi¬ 
tional lessons in grammar review, two or three in punctuating 
non-restrictive modifiers, one or two in letter forms, several 
in review of Part II or in spelling; we should find our first 
estimate of lessons swollen beyond the number of recitations. 

You will notice that, with the exception of Lessons 32-36, 
no part of the Second Division of the book is suggested for 
a 70-lesson course. I should not expect to go into the Second 
Division unless I had more than 80 recitations on the book, 
or perhaps more than 90. My own experience (which may 
not be a good guide for you) is that I do better work in 
limited time if I concentrate on the more concrete and less 
advanced lessons. I should want, before going on to the 
Second Division, to study Lessons 9 and 10 in sentences, 
Lessons 19 and 20 in whole compositions, and perhaps to 
spend some days with the Additions to Lessons 19, 24, 25, 
and 27. 

If my one-year course ran to 110 lessons (which would 
be an exceptionally large number, considering that all theme 
assignments and literature lessons are an addition to the 
book lessons), I should choose some supplementary material 
from the Second Division. My own choice would be Lessons 
40, 41, 42, 44, 48, and possibly 56. 

Section 9: The Lessons for a Second-Year Course 

It is not my private opinion, but the general consensus 
of experience, that a second-year course will be more effective 
if the early part of it is a review and a reinforcing of what 
was studied in the first-year course. In universities there is 
a growing body of opinion, corroborated in many high schools, 
that our principal shortcoming in the teaching of composi¬ 
tion is the assumption that progress can be achieved by 
moving on into new territory—by “covering ground/’ It is 
likely that progress is a matter of learning more thoroughly 
about the old territory. “Conquered territory” in composi¬ 
tion work is almost like the pot of gold at the end of the 
rainbow. Nobody ever sees it. In our ambition to plot higher 
courses, to go on and on into journalism and verse-making, 
we often overlook the fact that last year’s teaching is evap¬ 
orating. Unless we renew it and strengthen it and solidify 
it, we may find ourselves flying in very thin air. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 37 

If I were to use Theme-Building through two consecutive 
years, each of 90 book lessons, I could not cover all the ground 
to my satisfaction. If, as will usually be the case for second- 
year work, I were teaching on a foundation laid by someone 
else, I should have to investigate the foundation, and should 
expect to relay almost as much of it as if I had made it 
myself. I have always lost by haste in going ahead to new 
ground; I have never regretted any amount of delay to make 
previous teaching secure. 

So I should, in a second-year course, regard the First 
Division and Group 1 of the Second Division as review mate¬ 
rial, and should count myself lucky if I could escape with 

only ten lessons in it. And I should not dare omit a few 

experiments with spelling, grammar, and punctuation, to see 
what rudiments were still unmastered. I should find out 

what lessons of the First Division had been omitted and 

should assign those before going on to advanced work; nor 
should I take it for granted that I need not assign any 
lessons of the Second Division which had been used in the 
previous year. 

I11 planning the order and number of lessons a good 
method would be to arrange sets in a logical order of develop¬ 
ment, each set to contain a variety of material. I should not 
move through the lessons seriatim, though a self-distrustful 
teacher could follow that order without great loss, except 
for Lessons 52-58. 

FIRST SET 

Sentences, 38 
Paragraphs, 40, 41 
Compositions, 43, 44 
Words, 52, 53 

THIRD SET 

Sentences, 39 
Compositions, 46, 48 
Words, 54, 55 

I am conscious of how impertinent such detailed sugges¬ 
tions will appear to many teachers, and of how wide of the 
mark must be any one teacher’s schedule when applied to 
the method of any other teacher who has his own plan of 


SECOND SET 

Sentences, 37 
Paragraphs, 42 
Compositions, 45, 47 
Words, 56 

FOURTH SET 

Compositions, 49, 50, 51 
Words, 57, 58 


38 


WORKWAYS FOR 


campaign. I am not recommending any program to any 
teacher. The outlines of courses are offered only because 
the publishers frequently receive requests for them and have 
asked me to anticipate the wishes of these users of Theme- 
Building. The courses may, however, be worth while in one 
way to a teacher who makes no direct use of them: they may 
suggest a way of beginning operations, and thus may be, 
like the minister’s text, something to depart from. 

Section 10: Some “Best Devices” for Handling 
Theme Topics 

In the English Journal and in the various leaflets issued 
by associations of English teachers there is increasing em¬ 
phasis put on personal descriptions of “a device of mine that 
worked.” The Tri-State Notes, for one example, announced 
in its first issue the policy of limiting itself largely to brief 
contributions of testimonies from teachers. In May, 1924, 
the Bulletin of the Illinois Association of Teachers of English 
published a selected lot of answers to a request for “best 
suggestions.” The higher criticism of pedagogy might call 
the devices slight affairs, but we mere teachers find inspira¬ 
tion in them. The editor of the Bulletin has given me leave 
to reprint here a part of the issue that was devoted to theme 
topics. If every state were assembling such material and 
were as generous in making bounties of its riches, English 
problems would rapidly diminish. 

In May, 1923, a questionnaire, prepared by teachers of the 
English Department of the Rockford High School, was sent to the 
teachers of English in Illinois. It aimed to collect “the best sugges¬ 
tions for improving our work to be gained from the experiences of 
the school year just closing.” Answers were received from eighty- 
two teachers in the state. The results have been gathered together 
by sixteen teachers of the department in Rockford. They respect¬ 
fully submit this report with the hope that it may be of service. 

The first two questions concerned oral composition: 1. What is 
the most successful assignment you have made for oral composition 
this year? 2. What is the most successful device, i. e., scheme or 
method of procedure, you have used in oral composition this year? 

Assignments dealing with the personal experiences of the pupils 
were frequent, (a) “The story of a memento and how it came into 
my possession. The memento itself was brought into class and dis- 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 39 


played at the proper moment after curiosity had been aroused.” 
(b) ‘‘Extemporaneous talks on everyday courtesy developed from 
actual observation.” This assignment seems practical because it 
gives a chance for some instruction in good manners—a subject 
we are apt to neglect in our public school work. Many teachers 
have found that talks in which an object is displayed have proved 
popular. If the pupil can bring the article to be explained or can 
draw a diagram upon the board, he feels more at home. 

It was delightful to see how many have found that their best 
oral themes were based upon the classics. We hear so much today 
about using personal experiences for composition subjects that we 
sometimes forget that the reading of a book may furnish a very real 
personal experience. Here are some suggestions that seem especially 
worth trying: “After the reading of the Odyssey I had a meeting to 
which came the gods and goddesses. They introduced themselves 
and told us of their origin, lives, and relationship to each other and 
to mankind.” Another teacher used a similar assignment except 
that she included heroes and monsters, and the class tried to guess 
whom the pupil represented. The following devices encouraged 
reading: (a) “Pupils in a 3B class were instructed to go to the 
library, look around, each select a book with which he was unfamil¬ 
iar, but which seemed attractive. They then spent an hour examining 
these and finding out as much as possible about them. They brought 
the books to class and talked about them. The result was that other 
pupils afterward took out the books for elective home reading.” 
(b) “Talk to the class upon a book you have read at home in such 
a way that someone else will wish to "read it too.” In this case the 
teacher illustrated with some book so that no one would begin at the 
beginning and occupy the whole period with a long rehashing of the 
plot. Reports upon subjects assigned as a preparation for the read¬ 
ing of some classic were also frequently mentioned; for example, 
such subjects as the Crusades, the treatment of the Jews, the rela¬ 
tion between Anglo-Saxons and Normans, preceded by the study of 
Ivcinlioe. In practically every case where a topic had been success¬ 
fully used, the replies seemed to indicate that the teacher had done 
good preparatory work—perhaps had herself shown the class how 
it might be done. 

The question, What is the most successful device you have used 
in oral composition this year? brought out the fact that many of us 
are employing the so-called socialized recitation in various forms. 
Organized literary clubs were mentioned many times. A banquet 
scene with a toastmaster and after-dinner speeches was suggested. 
This similar device was described: “The members of my senior class 
held a reunion after twenty years. A committee had previously given 
each to understand what he was to be, and some came in costume. 
A toastmaster presided.*’ Evidently we use dialogs between seller 


40 


WORKWAYS FOR 


and buyer often. Sometimes the teacher is the unresponsive buyer 
and sometimes a pupil. Here are two other schemes: (a) “Enter¬ 
tain your class by a pantomime in which you suggest a story with a 
situation, climax, denouement. Two or three may combine on this.” 
(b) “The class dramatized stories written by themselves.” All of 
these devices have a certain dramatic touch -which will help to 
overcome self-consciousness. Some excellent methods have been 
originated to help timid pupils to appear before the class. This cure 
for shyness was sent: “My most successful oral composition device 
was my scheme to ‘break the ice’ for beginning freshmen. If the 
child confessed or showed that he was frightened, I told him that we 
would do some chorus work. Then I would call upon several other 
pupils with him, and I would have them practice good position and 
do relaxing exercises; this would get them to laughing and talking. 
When I thought the time was ripe, I would inquire, ‘What was the 
story you were going to tell us, John?’ ” One teacher gave additional 
Credit to volunteers; another started the ball rolling by presenting 
an oral composition herself; another wrote: “In our freshman class 
we worked up from reviews of fairy tales, given standing at the seat, 
to the point where the pupil chose a topic he thought interesting to 
the class. By this time each gave his talk before the class. Next we 
asked that from time to time the better talks be repeated before the 
Assembly. 1 This device seems to be the best we have found for train¬ 
ing toward a natural manner and getting away from so much rising 
inflection.” More suggestions for curing the rising inflection would 
be helpful; this was the only time it was mentioned. The rising 
inflection and “and-a” are the two habits hardest to cure. Many 
teachers have the pupils take their seats after a certain number of 
“and’s”; here is a scheme which is unusual: “After some preliminary 
work in eliminating ‘andV from oral themes, I assigned themes 
which were to be given without the use of more than four ‘and’s/ 
If a pupil used four ‘and’s’ before he was through, he had to stop 
and write the rest of his theme on the board without using one ‘and/ 
If he could not do this, the class helped him work over some of his 
sentences. This was a great aid in improving general sentence struc¬ 
ture. In some classes Ave counted ‘butV and ‘thenV also.” 

The following is a very sensible idea for the criticism of oral 
themes: “We made a card listing six desirable outcomes: prepara- 
tion, grammar, diction, originality, delivery, group contributions. 
Every phase in which a pupil failed Ava,s noted by the pupil and by 
me, and he worked on his own errors. Those cards are much fin¬ 
gered and dog-eared now.” Of course these devices will not be suc¬ 
cessful with all teachers. We must teach in our OAvn way, but some¬ 
times the mention of a device used by another will revive our OAvn 
originality. 

There Avere a number of questions concerned either directly or 



THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


41 


indirectly with written composition. The first one was, What is the 
most successful assignment you have made for written composition 
this year? The reading done in class has evidently furnished many 
good assignments; for example, a newspaper account of the theft of 
Silas Marner’s gold; a Roman newspaper, made in the shape of a 
scroll—such as might have appeared the morning after Caesar’s 
assassination; a group combination of Salmagundi-up-to-date. 
After a season of reading, familiar essays upon habits, manners, 
and mannerisms have been very enlivening. Whispering, chew¬ 
ing gum, fads, styles, etc., have all received satirical, even caustic 
comments. The Spectator Papers also inspired this kind of com¬ 
position. One teacher wrote, “A 4A class chose the most hack¬ 
neyed subject they could find and attempted to ‘bring it to life.’ 
It followed a five weeks’ study of the essay. The most stale 
subject they could think of was ‘Cooperation.’ They tried to do 
for it what some of the authors they had studied had done with 
similar subjects.” Another said, “Apparently my best themes for 
the year were those written (on any subject) in imitation of the 
style of a model read by me to the class.” . . . 

Events happening in the school or in the community often prove 
first-rate composition subjects. The following replies indicate this: 
(a) “The devastating snowstorm last spring offered much first-hand 
material for two days’ class work. There were write-ups of accidents, 
themes of humorous incidents, and pieces of good description. To 
everyone this made an appeal.” (b) “All of the boys marched in a 
Loyalty parade. The assignment was to write about some interesting 
incident connected with the parade—the boys as participants, the 
girls as spectators.” (c) “The School Board was discussing the 
advisability of establishing a junior college in our city. The seniors 
were asked to present as many arguments for or against the project 
as they could think of. The students interviewed various educators 
on the subject, and some wrote for detailed comments to cities where 
junior colleges are already established.” The next assignment has 
probably been used a good many times, but to some it may be new. 
This is the way one teacher described it: “In the sophomore class 
we worked out together an outline on ‘Our Home Town,’ and the 
members of the class then worked up some most satisfactory com¬ 
positions. They did considerable research, delving into the early 
history of the town, finding out about the present system of gov¬ 
ernment, industries, etc. They did some real work, and then, too, I 
felt that a considerable amount of wholesome civic pride was cre¬ 
ated.” Another teacher wrote that the local newspaper was glad to 
print some of the articles, for forgotten incidents of the early his¬ 
tory of the town had been unearthed. 

Several teachers have been successful with the writing of poetry. 
Here is one plan: “I gave the class a dozen first lines of poems—as 


42 


WORK WAYS FOR 


suggestive lines as I could find—and asked them to write verse using 
the lines as a starter. These lines seemed to facilitate the task by 
furnishing a meter ready made and by striking a high note of inspir¬ 
ation.” In other classrooms the study of a particular type of 
poetry—for example, the ballad or the lyric—has been an inspira¬ 
tion to imitative effort. The magazine, The (Ilearn , containing high- 
school verse, is helpful for this sort of work. It is stimulating 
both to the writing and to the study of poetry. . . . 

Freshmen, whose ideas are limited, may find plots for stories in 
cartoons and the illustrations of magazines; for example, the covers 
of The Saturday Evening Tost; remind the youngsters of some of 
their own Tom Sawyer escapades. 

Many teachers spoke of the use of model themes. Some kept 
both their best and their worst from year to year and by reading 
them aloud or posting them upon the bulletin board created a certain 
ideal toward which to strive. The writer of a good theme always 
felt honored when he was asked to copy his composition so that his 
teacher might use it with future classes. 

Writing for print has evidently been a strong stimulus to better 
composition. “Publishing a tiny paper in class,” “The starting of a, 
school paper, having it typewritten and posted in Assembly Hall,” 
“The publication of ‘The Sherwood Arrow* by a. class after reading 
Ivanhoe" —these answers show our attempts to approximate the 
writing lor print ideal. . . . 

There seem to have been good chances to provide a. motive for 
letter writing in many of the schools. The .Junior lied Cross, in its 
efforts to promote a feeling of friendliness between us and our neigh¬ 
bors, has evidently done a good work for the teachers of composi¬ 
tion, if they will avail themselves of the opportunity, One listed as 
her most successful piece of work the writing of some of these letters 
to Paris. She also mentioned receiving through tins medium “a 
beautifully gotten-up book from a, Paris school, containing paint¬ 
ings, sewing, photos, and letters.” She spoke, also, of going with 
the class to see the American Exhibit at the Art Institute. After 
the visit “they wrote letters of appreciation to the artist they 
liked best. Some of them received answers to their letters.” . . . 

Segregated classes are evidently growing in popularity, for this 
method was suggested a number of times. Of course, if the classes 
are segregated into ability groups, the teacher of the C or 1) class 
can adapt the work to the class. The idea of a “hospital” section is 
evidently being tried out in a good many high schools in Illinois. 
One school has two sections, called Opportunity Classes, for juniors 
and seniors who are especially weak in some form of composition. 
No outside preparation is required since this is taken in addition 
to the regular English courses. Some of these students stay five 
weeks, some ten, some a whole semester or longer, depending upon 




TIII’IMK III! I LDI NO (ItWVIHKh I1DITI0N) 


III 

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Tim punllh tlo not mmnl I It in work, On Hit* oilin' Imiid, noiiu* Iiiivu 

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Homo tlmo, Ct*t*l well Hiil lHfied with wlml I liny gel. Homo id' Hu* 
loimlmrH in niiHwerlng HiIh tpmintlon gave Hit* lmprt*Nhloii 11 in I tlmy 
roundin' il hod pnyoliolngy lo put. 11 mipil into 11 ehi.un Hint IIiih 
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rottlly turn tlo il, woUK No doiiht mmiy I'li.illirMN run In* inlvagod hv 
Hum nmtliod. 


PAKT TWO 

COMMENTS ON THE LESSONS 
(In the order in which they occur in the book) 

A collection of “best devices of teachers 5 ’ for choosing and 
handling theme topics is given at the end of Part I. 

For a brief description of what some teacher might do 
during the first twelve days of book Lessons in Theme- 
Building see Section 8 of Part I. 

“Set yourself free.” This Prolog to the book may seem 
to some students and a few teachers to be a romantic sort 
of appeal, a kind of sermon, and not a very practical state¬ 
ment of the facts of school work. It is the plain truth. A 
teacher who does not understand this will drudge through the 
year at the head of a class of drudges. The teacher who 
recognizes it will lead a band of seekers after freedom. The 
drudge who hears a command to “make a theme emphatic” 
will go through some motions of emphasis, and not be bene¬ 
fited. The seeker for freedom, hearing the same command, 
will say to himself, “Now I see a way to let people know that 
I am not a dullard”—or, since we are speaking of realities, 
he will say, “that I am not a dub.” The two responses to 
the same command are as different as slavery and liberty. 
When the desire for freedom in self-expression is the motive 
of a class, instruction is the kind of rescue work that Miss 
Sullivan did for Helen Keller. 

I know how sermon-like that sounds. I know all too well 
how much of any -effective recitation must be occupied with 
drudgery, with expostulation, with whipping up the laggards, 
with imposing penalties on the unwilling. I know & that a 
pretty little prolog in a book or a classroom may be the 
veriest hypocrisy, and that the direct preaching of it may 
be an empty ceremony which offends honest boys and girls. 
T know that in actual classrooms results are not secured by 

44 


THEME-BUILDING (BEVISED EDITION) 


45 


preachments, but by hard work. The “Prolog for Every 
Lesson” is not to be mouthed and emotionally repeated. It is 
the. great fact which animates all teaching of composition. 
If it is once understood in the hearts of the class, there will 
be no need of appealing to it formally. It will vivify all 
hard exercise and justify all strict requirements. 

“Do you know what a sentence is?” In 1916 the direc¬ 
tors of freshman English in the colleges of Indiana agreed to 
administer a very simple test to the entering class, to oblige 
each freshman to show whether he knew what a sentence is. 
The test was substantially like the one in Theme-Building — 
groups of words, some of which were sentences and some of 
which were not. Barely fifty per cent of the freshmen knew 
the difference. In 1919 the University of Wisconsin tried 
the experiment with its freshman class four weeks after 
matriculation. The first question was: “In the following 
passage underline each of the expressions which does not 
constitute a grammatically complete sentence.” 

His first object was to seek an interview with Mr. Brown. 
And accordingly, early in the morning Jim set off on his walk to 
the shops, where for so many years his days had been spent. 
Where for so long a time, his thoughts had been thought. His 
hopes and fears experienced. It was not a cheering feeling to 
remember that henceforth he Avas to be severed from all these 
familiar places. His spirits farther being hampered by the evi¬ 
dent feelings of the majority of those who had been his fellow- 
Avorkmen. As he stood in the entrance to the foundry, aAvaiting Mr. 
Brown’s leisure, many of those employed in the Avorks passed him 
on their return from breakfast. While, Avith one or two exceptions, 
he received no acknoAvledgments of former acquaintance beyond 
a distant nod at the utmost. 

Only three per cent of the sub-freshmen could distinguish 
accurately between the four sentences and the four groups 
that are not sentences. Only thirty-five per cent of the 
regular freshmen could distinguish. 

The shocking disclosure of ignorance was published to 
the schools that had certified the freshmen for college (119 
public high schools and ten private secondary schools). The 
freshman faculty also took occasion to explain to the schools 
“seven points on the teaching of grammar in the high school 
in its relation to effectiveness in English composition.” Num- 


46 


WORKWAYS FOR 


ber III was: “Direct technical instruction in English is 
impracticable except upon the basis of a genuine familiarity 
with the facts of English grammar.” There can be no ques¬ 
tion of the truth of this declaration—little though it may be 
realized in some schools. 

Do you know that conditions are better in your state 
than in these states that have published the facts? Do you 
believe that there is good reason to distrust the pronounce¬ 
ment of Wisconsin as to the only way to secure improvement? 

That pronouncement is not a dictum that applies only to 
college conditions or to liigh-school students preparing for 
college. It is the fundamental truth for secondary teaching. 
Only a few students, gifted with an instinct for language, 
can ever know surely what a sentence is until they under¬ 
stand the grammatical nature of a sentence. They cannot 
achieve such an understanding until they clearly apprehend 
what verbs are, why infinitives and gerunds and participles 
are not verbs, what subjects of verbs are, what the difference 
is between a relative pronoun, as subject and a personal pro¬ 
noun as subject, what adverb clauses are, what principal 
clauses are, what the difference is between an adverb like 
then and a conjunction like when, why appositive construc¬ 
tions are not statements. No generalization like “expresses 
a complete thought” can teach what a sentence is; no appeal 
to pride or carefulness can teach the distinction. Until we 
have taught the grammar of the difference, we have taught 
nothing. 

If the test shows that most of your class in the tenth or 
the eleventh year do not know what a sentence is, only one 
course of action will be fair to these poor untrained students 
—to go back to the essential rudiments and teach them. This 
may be heartbreaking for you, and it will make them dis¬ 
gruntled unless they have faith in the Prolog and the Test 
of the Anteroom. If you and the class have such faith, you 
may enter upon the review with good spirit. Be assured 
that your plight is not peculiar. At no stage of the present 
course of English in American colleges and schools is the 
knowledge of the sentence established. College freshmen, we 
have seen, have to be taught because the teaching was not 
done in high school; upper classes in high school have to be 
taught because they did not learn in the lowest year; they 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


47 


were not taught in the lowest year because it was assumed 
that of course they had been taught such rudiments in junior 
high; most published courses of study for cities assume that 
of course this childish rudiment will be thoroughly mastered 
by the end of the seventh year, perhaps pretty well taught 
by the end of the sixth; and no sixth-year teacher can do 
more than make a beginning in such a long, hard subject, 
for she has to teach over again the elements that are sched¬ 
uled for the fifth year, but that are not mastered there. In 
most of our city systems there is either a willingness or a 
necessity to certify for promotion a large percentage of pupils 
who do not know the rudiments of sentence structure that 
are nominally required for promotion. From top to bottom 
of our whole organization for teaching the mother tongue 
there is the same discouraging necessity of going back to 
build the foundations that were supposed to be laid years 
before. 

It is useless to try to fix the blame for this condition. The 
blame must be distributed all along the line. None of us 
want to teach rudiments; we all prefer to teach literary 
appreciation and to leave the dirty work to those who labor 
below us. If you, too, refuse to do your share of making up 
past deficiencies—well, that is a matter for your own con¬ 
science and your own judgment as to what education is. 
Throw this pamphlet away and enjoy yourself. 

If you share my opinion—at least in part—you will pre¬ 
scribe work in the Appendix and will not grudge the time 
necessary, however long it may be, to establish a knowledge 
of what verbals and phrases and subordinate clauses are, of 
what a sentence is. 

“The intolerable sentence-error/’ For a quarter of a 
century I have encountered the difficult question, “Why are 
you so strict with students when the makers of classics 
indulge in sentence-errors ?” I have seen professors strug¬ 
gling with the problem of “When is a sentence-error not an 
error ?” For twenty years I made the mistake of putting all 
my teaching stress on the heinousness of the error, and made 
no analysis of why it is not an error. The puzzle is a very 
real one, and we all do harm until we know the solution. For 
we call sentence-errors “the baby’s mistake” and then have 
to admit that all our best authors make sentence-errors. 


48 


WORKWAYS FOR 


I shall never forget the peace and pleasure I felt when I 
first saw that the error is not an error unless it is ignorantly 
made —that is, all depends on the ignorance. I print below 
part of an explanation that I wrote for Tri-State English 
Notes of March, 1924: 

This antagonism between our minimum requirements and our 
literature is a peculiar puzzle. So far as I can learn, every 
English author except Samuel Johnson has used which clauses as 
complete sentences; our literature is dotted with appositive nouns set 
off as sentences; recent writers frequently make sentences out of 
fragments like these from Conrad: “The right accent. The capa¬ 
cious lung, the thundering or the tender vocal cords.” Nearly all 
authors have made comma sentences like this one of Matthew Ar¬ 
nold: “We must not rest, she and they are always thinking and 
saying, in negative criticism, we must be creative and construc¬ 
tive.” If Conrad’s fraction and Arnold’s double unit are literary 
customs, why are they sins in school themes? Certain high-placed 
advisers of secondary teachers are putting that very query to us, and 
are inclined to fear that we are small-minded in our taboo of the 
irregular sentence that is employed with increasing favor by twen¬ 
tieth-century authors. 

One day I stumbled by accident on the full and fair reply. I 
was retorting to a clever theme-writer who had pleaded for a license 
to use the fractional and the comma sentences of literature. “Oh,” I 
snapped out rather peevishly, “make all the sentence-errors you 
like—only do me the favor to label them. Just put an asterisk at 
the critical point and at the bottom of the page write ‘Intentional.’ ” 
The young artist was delighted. His next theme contained six frac¬ 
tional sentences duly annotated. I said nothing. Next week his 
theme contained three labeled errors and two not labeled. I 
marked his work zero. He cheerfully acknowledged the justice of 
the zero. 

Since that day my mind has been perfectly clear about the 
difference between literature and themes. The author uses sentence- 
errors by design to vary his style; the pupil uses them in ignorance 
The comma or the period is not sinful. The only sin is in the 
ignorance. If any student can prove that he is always conscious 
ot the form that he is using, he may have all the license that is 
within the bounds of good taste. But until he knows exactly what 
lie is about, and can prove that he always knows, his ignorance 
is sin. G 

Anteroom Test 

The only proper sentences are numbers 3, 6, and 12 
Some detailed comment follows. 1. The noun overcoat is 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


49 


merely modified by a with phrase, in which is a that clause; 
this type of sentence-error ordinarily comes from using a 
noun in apposition and regarding it as a separate sentence 
because it is so long and so important in its content. 2. This 
is merely a participle, thinking, modified by the as clause 
and having the how clause as its object; the that clause is 
used as a peculiar kind of adverbial modifier of glad. 3. A 
proper sentence, because all the modifiers are grouped around 
the principal clause, he began. 4. Contains a sentence-error, 
because the independent clause, others indicated mice, is set 
off by a mere comma. This type of sentence is frequent in lit¬ 
erature, for an author might wish to show that the last clause 
is not coordinate with the first one, but is of secondary impor¬ 
tance, coordinate only with the second clause; to use two semi¬ 
colons would really misrepresent the thought. The natural 
ways of writing it in themes would be to use and before 
others or to split into two sentences at some. 5. A mere which 
clause. 6. Good sentence, the framework of which is to com¬ 
pare might be embarrassing. 7. Sentence-error, because there 
are two distinct sentences in the quoted words; there must 
be a period or a semicolon after she whispered. 8. A mere 
trio of infinitives— to wake, wonder, and to find; all the 
verbs are in subordinate clauses. 9. Also is not a conjunction 
that can be used with a comma; it is a “conjunctive adverb,” 
like then and nevertheless, which requires a semicolon. 10. A 
mere pair of where clauses—where everything was kept moist 
and (where) we could no sooner hang our wash. 11. In fact 
is a connective phrase that cannot be used with a comma; 
it is like the adverbs also, then, and however. 12. A proper 
sentence, the framework of which is you want to find. 13. 
Sometimes is an independent adverb that requires a period 
or a semicolon. 


LESSON 1 

Lesson 1 shows the kind of difference there is between this year’s 
work and last year’s emphasis on mechanics. We are no longer in a 
region of absolute right and absolute wrong; we are discussing the 
question of better taste, better judgment. It is important that the 
class should understand this at the outset. They will feel a better 
spirit for the work if they see that it is different; for the fear that 
1 ‘ this is the same old stuff” is a hindrance to a good attack early in 
the year, and the assurance that this is “new stuff” will prevent a 


50 


WORKWAYS FOR 


wrong attack. Call attention, by turning pages and dipping into vari¬ 
ous Lessons, to the fact that no grammar or spelling or punctuation 
appears in the body of the book. 

Emphasize another point. No student (unless he is gifted with an 
innate sense of style) can hope to make his sentences varied and mature 
until he readily understands the grammar terms in which the teaching 
of Part I has to be done. This comes out well on page 9 and in D on 
page 10. More than one textbook author has called a compound verb 
(I took my gun and set out) a pair of coordinate clauses. 

That device of using a pair of verbs for one subject is very much 
more important and effective than many teachers could guess. Inci¬ 
dentally, it is harder than most of them suspect; it will bear added 
comment and illustration. The sentences in Section D should be re¬ 
cast in class, and other similar sentences given by one student to an¬ 
other for altering. 

When such a sentence as number 1 on page 14 is made simple, there 
is no need of a comma; but a comma is often proper (and sometimes 
decidedly preferable) if the two verbs show different times (as in 
sentence 2) or if an author wishes to show that in any way the verbs 
are not alike in their form of statement. 

The Lesson explains why some and sentences are poor and weak 
forms. It will not do, however, to lay too much stress on the idea that 
these are flagrant errors. Some sentences from literature come peril¬ 
ously near to these forms. (See the discussion in the comment on Les¬ 
son 37.) Authors have at times been very free-and-easy in their use 
of and to link dissimilar clauses. So do not insist too strongly that 
the shifts in Sections B and C are absolutely wrong; say that they are 
dubious and dangerous until a writer is free of all fondness for and. 

The devices of using passive participles and compound verbs can be 
made good illustrations of how indispensable grammar is for improve¬ 
ment in style—at least for the average student. Many teachers and 
most of the laymen who advise us base their theories of rhetoric on the 
gifted student, who has an instinct for effects, and who can go on to 
glory without any formal knowledge of grammar. Such were all these 
advisers: they did not profit by grammar, and perhaps do not now 
know any. Such may be a few of the members of your class. With 
them we have little concern in this part of our teaching—though we 
may feel confident that definite knowledge of grammar will do them no 
harm and will not be a waste of time. We must teach the ninety-five 
per cent who are not gifted. They will not advance without point-by¬ 
point instruction in particular devices. 


Suggested Changes for the Sentences 

1. And had watched it. 2. And in a few minutes was out of sight’. 
3. As he finally set foot on shore, we could all tell by his sigh of satis¬ 
faction that he was exhausted. 4. And that there was blood running 
5. This place was a small cafe, managed by. 6. Was a small, dapper 
youth, who, alongside Chief Gilmour, the pride of the herders, appeared 
insignificant. 7. While she looked in the glass, Bert still laughed 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


51 


8. The note that he begins to read aloud contains these comforting words. 

9. The news of the marriage killed her (for it is hardly necessary to 
tell us that the news came; of course it came). Most students will 
prefer, and properly enough: When the news of the marriage came to 
her, it killed her. 10. Another picture, called ‘‘ The Milkmaid, ’ ’ by 
Greuze, shows a young girl. 11. She led me .... told me to lie down 
. . . . , and ordered a servant to bring. (Most students will not realize 
that they are free to take such liberties, and will be more likely to make 
a complex sentence of this type: After she had led and told, a servant 
brought.) 12. As it was now about eight o’clock at night, the captain. 
(Discourage the nominative absolute beginning—‘‘It now being.” This 
is proper and somewhat common in literature, but is a construction that 
is almost sure to cause bungling if students cultivate it.) 13. “Now 
that you have had a good look at the crowd,” said the old man, “if 

you will crawl”-. 14. Finding me more than a match for him at 

this game, he w r ent on to his next customer. (An as or a since clause 
at the beginning is a safer model. Discourage “I being more than a 
match,’ ’ because this is almost sure to be a clumsy way of expressing the 
reason.) 15. From my study of the subject I learn that there are 
several steps which must be taken. (The sentence could be made simple 
by saying ‘ ‘ I learn of several steps to take, ’ ’ but this is not quite true 
to the writer’s meaning.) 16. The first customer in his stationery shop 
—opened before seven—was a commuter. 17. Now that the wind has 
gone down again, I am. 18. My chum is always making jokes about a 
peculiarity of hers—being very fat. 19. Tonight, in his introductory 
remarks as chairman of the meeting, he will tell all his glorious thoughts. 
20. When I put the case to them in that way, they at once saw my point. 


SUGGESTIONS FOR THEMES, PAGE 15 

No problem is so hard in the making of a composition text as the 
best way of offering theme assignments. If they are grouped together 
in one part of the book (an arrangement that would seem the most 
convenient), some teachers will not reach them till the middle of the 
year, and others will be grieved at the unbroken stretches devoted to 
sentences and paragraphs. If the assignments are put in at regular 
intervals and called lessons, some teachers will faithfully use them in 
that order, will assign themes to a class that ought to be reviewing rudi¬ 
ments, and will thus apportion the work to poor advantage. So I have 
“suggested” themes rather frequently, in the hope of inducing teachers 
to use their judgment and never to require a theme when some other 
sort of work needs doing. 

No book can assign themes wisely to any given class. In fact I 
will go so far as to say that every theme ought to grow out of the in¬ 
terests of the class, and not dut of a book. But, since a book is ex¬ 
pected to spur invention and to exhibit alluring possibilities, I have 
tried to live up to that customary demand. I have suggested that 
themes should be written or spoken as often as possible. In WorTcways 
I would urge that the teacher must regard these suggestions as entirely 
optional. Especially at the opening of the year, when vacation rust has 



52 


WORKWAYS FOR 


gathered in brains and before there has been preparation for the more 
ambitious attempts in composition, there is a likelihood that no theme 
should be undertaken until after some review has been had and Lesson 
2 has been studied. In my own experience I have found that I am 
prone to rush into composition too early in the fall term. I once ex¬ 
perimented by assigning only one theme during the first month—and 
I am not yet sure that such an extreme program was unwise. For by 
the time we prepared the second theme we were responsible for most of 
the common decencies of mechanics and for the general needs of struc¬ 
ture. To assign the early themes of the year without making such defi¬ 
nite requirements is to make students suppose that theme-building is 
a happy-go-lucky avocation, not a real job in which they must exercise 
skill and conscience. 

In my own classes I should not assign the first ‘theme of the year 
until I had covered at least as much ground as this: 1. a day, or 
several days, with the Anteroom Test and the weaknesses discovered 
there; 2. some review of sentence-errors in the Appendix; 3. some 
review of subordinate clauses; 4. Lesson 2. It is likely that most 
schools will secure better results in less time, and will open the year 
with much better spirit, if they refrain from assigning a theme until 
Lesson 11 on paragraphs and Lesson 17 on the “straight line” have 
been studied. ' 

Most of this material is, in one way, “old stuff.” All in the class 
have been hearing for several years about paragraphing dialog, and 
every class trained in Sentence and Theme has heard about the “straight 
line” and the danger of “and” sentences. But the treatment in 
Theme-Building goes no farther back than to give reminders of what 
was learned last year, to splice this year’s work firmly to it, and then 
to stretch forward into more advanced ways of learning. The new book 
is not a repetition on the old level—as will soon be apparent. 

I have found that I do well to advertise ‘ i newness ’ ’ at the beginning 
of the year. Students are made listless if the work of a new year ap¬ 
pears to resemble last year’s scenes. To cover the same ground again, 
to use the same part of the same book once more, to hear identical in¬ 
structions—these are disheartening. Unless we show that, in the 
language of the Suggestions,. we are making “a new effort” for “a 
new training,” we begin discouragingly. Hence I have done what I 
could to impress the idea of taking a fresh hold and entering a new 
region of endeavor. First I have spoken of improvement in the struc¬ 
ture of themes. This need is steadily put forward throughout the book. 
Explain to the class that in later Lessons they are to see planless para¬ 
graphs and compositions written for examination boards by candidates 
of ability who showed that they had never been taught any idea of what 
structure is; in their themes they appeared ignorant and even silly 
Yet some of them were so bright that a few definite lessons in “straight 
line” and climax would have made them seem like different writers. 
The coming Lessons will open new possibilities for improvement. 11 You 
may be sure, in the second place, that you must apply what you learn ’ ’ 
says the Lesson. No Lesson is a repetition of the same old gymnastic 
exercise; each Lesson offers a new chance for an advance that has not 
been made before. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVTSED EDITION) 53 

MARCELLA, PAGE 17 

I sinned grievously for many years by assigning such a story as this 
without any particular insistence on structure. Sometimes I did not 
offer a plan, or point out the importance of a plan, or give special di¬ 
rections that one purpose must be apparent, or say anything about the 
last sentence as the goal of all the other sentences. Of late years I 
have been trying to make amends for my early sin. I would earnestly 
recommend to all teachers that they take warning from my case and 
plan to avoid the reproaches of conscience when they review ten or 
twenty years of labor. 

‘ ‘ Structure ’ ’ need not be paraded before the class as an ugly skele¬ 
ton from a rhetorical closet. The word need never be mentioned. But 
“What "would your last words be?” is a. natural flesh-and-blood query 
that may produce excellent structure. If a student is aiming for that 
final effect—that “snapper’ 1 —he will unconsciously be contriving good 
coherence through paragraphs. 

THEME TOPICS, PAGE 18 

The book has three cycles of theme suggestions: this preliminary 
round, a round of “better themes,” and a round of “more ambitious 
themes . 1 ’ Such a glance ahead is often inspiriting to a class. 

No list of topics should be considered to contain the subject that is 
most suitable for any student. It is only a device to set his recollec¬ 
tion working. The best topic is to be found in his own experience. 


LESSON 2 

Here is detailed proof of the need of grammar for the average stu¬ 
dent if he is to improve his sentences. It may well be that Roosevelt 
and Kipling and London did not learn their art by any such textbook 
method of analyzing sentence structure, but their instincts were always 
observing, even if subconsciously, the facts of syntax in literature; they 
were imitating one after another these devices of grammar, even if 
they knew no grammatical names. 

It may be well to show the class a list of the sentence forms that 
we are learning to avoid in Part I, letting them see how definite and 
limited is the set of taboos. 

Not too many compound sentences. 

Not too many short simple sentences. 

Not too many sentences that begin with the subject and verb. 

Show the class that Lessons 1-6 are all about avoiding compound sen¬ 
tences ; that if any simple sentence contains one subject with two verbs, 
or an appositive, or if it begins with a preposition, it is not likely to 
seem childishly short. Show the Index entries, “Subject and verb 
first,” “Modifiers begin with,” and make it clear that a few of these 
tried and tested recipes for sentence-improvement are carried through 
the book and taught in a variety of connections. 


54 


WORKWAYS FOR 


It is remarkable how few students ever use an appositive, and how 
refreshing an appositive is in higli-school composition*. The Index, 
under ‘ ‘ Appositives, ’ ’ shows how the book keeps urging this construction. 

The ways of varying shown on page 21 are not the least difficult or 
artificial for a student who knows some grammar, yet it is the rare 
student who ever uses them. A sentence on the model of Kipling’s, 
even if it is not nearly so involved and does not contain one felicity of 
diction, would stand out as a thing of beauty on the average page of 
school composition. 

It would seem to me wrong to require the memorizing of the list on 
page 22—I couldn’t recite it myself; but every device in it should be 
understood, and any student should be able to invent an illustrative 
sentence when called on. Reciting glibly on what constructions to use 
may be a worthless process; performing the act of using a given con¬ 
struction will amount to something. 

That comment on recitation method brings up the whole matter of 
“How would you handle the text in recitation?” No query is made 
more often when teachers talk together or is more anxiously asked by a 
novice. My own answer is unwelcome to many teachers, but is the only 
one I could ever find for my own guidance. I rely on a written test. 
The principal advantage of a written test is that it teaches students 
how to prepare their lessons. The reason for my faith appears in this 
paragraph from What Is English?* page 239: 


In my first year’s work I got in a hopeless bog with a 
volume of poems. The class seemed to know less every 
recitation. The simplest outstanding facts escaped them. 
One day I announced that the next lesson would be a very 
short review; that there would be a five-minute test in 
which they must show definite knowledge, expressed without 
the wriggling and looking for help that made oral recita¬ 
tion so valueless; and that I should then devote the rest 
of the hour to reading aloud, line by line, with comments 
and questions. I was not thinking of the test, but of the 
chance to force some comprehension into their brains. And 
lo! a miracle. They' studied differently. Somehow that 
thought that they were to be left alone in a silent test 
period, forced to show that they knew something or nothing 
—that made a difference. What they had floundered in 
they soon learned to make a path through. The written 
test is a great help for composition; it leaves the teacher 
more time for reading aloud; it relieves him of the distrac¬ 
tion of keeping a record of oral recitation. But more than 
all these combined is the training it gives in reading at¬ 
tentively. The same principle may be applied if a class 
finds any text hard to understand. Allow five minutes or 
so for a careful reading of a page in class, announcing 
that at the end of the time you will assign a topic for a 
test. When attention is thus concentrated, pupils over- 



* A manual on all phases of teaching English; Scott, Foresman and Company. 




THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


00 


come hard passages with an ease that is very enlightening. 
Explain the principle: That kind of concentration on each 
page, as if for a test, does twice as much in half the time. 

If a student can give specific answers, however brief, about two 
points in the Lesson, he has learned to study; and that is education. If 
a teacher will read the papers quickly, read only once, and decide on 
the grade without worrying and debating, he will find that • a daily 
written test is not much of an added burden, and that it brings satis¬ 
faction. That is a boon. 

A good type of test is to ask about one of the examples in the 
Lesson—for example: “Name two of the appositives that Roosevelt 
used. ’ ’ “ Tell in one sentence how Kipling used a participle. ’ ’ “ Give 

a sentence which shows a good use of nor. ” If a student writes for 
five minutes expatiating on the blessedness of appositives, he does not 
prove that he has learned anything worth while; if he can say, “Roose¬ 
velt used to preach in apposition with to preach he indicates that 
the whole lesson has been assimilated. 

The sentences of the Exercise are from Poe’s Gold Bug. One set 
of possibilities for altering them is as follows: 1. Using as a center a 
second peg driven at this spot, we drew a circle about four feet in 
diameter. 2. As soon as Legrand had taken a spade and given one to 
Jupiter and one to me, we set to digging as fast as possible. 3. At 
nightfall I felt much fatigued and would most gladly have declined the 
work. 4. How picturesque a group we composed and how strange and 
suspicious. 5. Little was said during two hours of steady digging. 
6 . The yelping of a dog, exceedingly interested in our proceedings, was 
our chief embarrassment. 7. He at length became so very noisy that 
we were afraid. 8. And then returned. 9. A depth of five feet, with¬ 
out discovering signs of any treasure. 10. After the general pause that 
followed I began to hope. . 11. And recommenced. 12. And now slightly 
enlarged. 13. As nothing yet appeared, Legrand at length climbed. 
14. While Jupiter was gathering up his tools, we turned. 15. After we 
had taken . . . . , Legrand strode. 16. And fell upon his knees. 17. 
Said Legrand, hissing out the words. 18. And placed his hand upon 
his right organ of vision, roaring, “Oh.” 19. Yelled Legrand, execu¬ 

ting a series. 20. Because the game’s not yet up. (The only natural 
way of carrying out Legrand’s way of talking would be to use a semi¬ 
colon or a period after Legrand.) 


LESSON 3 

A novice teacher would wonder why a textbook should be so excited 
about so; a teacher of twenty years’ experience will find that the com¬ 
parisons with boll-weevils and opium are very mild and short of the 
truth. The reason for the excitement is not simply the importance of 
rooting out one particular bad habit, beneficial as that process is. The 
fact is that a student who learns to avoid so has to overcome his whole 
heedless attitude of mind. He must make a mental revolution. When 
we teachers talk about so, we are taking hold of a symptom and dwell- 


56 


WORKWAYS FOR 


ing on it us if it were the whole affliction. Concentrating attention on 
the one symptom is good tactics, for it makes our work concrete and 
shows the student, in a humorous and unmistakable way, what slavery 
he is in. If the bonds of so can be broken, a wide avenue to freedom 
lies before him. 

For a test I should avoid any invitation to a general sermon on the 
evils of so. I should ask some such question as “What is said about 
the use of a semicolon?” “How can so be used as an adverb?” 
“How can as be used for avoiding so?” Students, like the rest of us, 
are in love with vague moralizing; their minds should be directed to 
specific, concrete, usable facts. 

At the top of page 27 is the motive—“if you do not wish to be 
an addict”—which was introduced on page 19— “if you wish not to 
be a slave to and.” It will be hard to press this idea of self-help too 
far. It is the basis of all teaching that endures and fructifies. “I 
can show you how to be free, but being free is a matter of your own de¬ 
sire and will-power; the battle is your own; no teacher can fight it 
for you. ’’ 

The caution at the head of the Exercise is directed mainly at the as 
or since clause at the beginning of a sentence. Such a clause is apt 
to sound stiff and pedantic, and it is likely to become habitual. It is 
needed only occasionally for variety. 

Examples of revised sentences: 1. As I was . . . . , you can im¬ 
agine. 2. The night was so warm that Jimmy took. 3. We so dis¬ 
guised ourselves by pulling our caps low down and turning up our 
collars that no one recognized. 4. One man, because he kept rising, 
was asked to leave. 5. We tried to arrange to sit together. 6 . The 
farmers who continue .... are not keeping up. 7. Since I could not 
smell . . . . , I was sure. 8.during the first quarter, to wear 


him out. 9. Finding as he grew older that . . . . , he swore off. 10. 
This storekeeper was so fond of looking .... that he told us. 11. 
Thinking that . . . . , we kept merrily on. 12.were of such a 


peculiar deep purple color which shimmered under the glaze that Lucy 
was. 13. If he was a good enough musician to play with the quartette 
every night, I should think he was good enough for a school orchestra. 
14. There was a whole quarter of an hour to spare; what was her 
hurry? 15. Because of the fact that the American League team 
. . . . the crowds have been small. 16. Because you have been pretty 
generous to me, I’ll give. 17. By the time the fourth man asked . . . , 
I felt like swinging on him. 18. I didn’t suppose, after being in the 
water several times with the bathing-suit, that it could possibly shrink 
any more. 19. Why should you want your fur coat if we are going to 
be taken in a closed car? 20. It was the second of November, a clear, 
frosty morning. Imagine my astonishment, then, to see a rose. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THEMES, PAGE 31 

Here is the third occurrence in twelve pages of the urging that 
“you must do the worjt.” A fourth case is at the top of page 33— 
“forbid yourself to use so.” A textbook is not allowed to repeat the 




THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


57 


adjuration very often, because critics would then call it “windy” and 
repetitious. But a teacher should never be weary of repeating it., A 
student who *‘just talks awhile” is damaging himself. 

The conversation reported on pages 31 and 32 took place in a 
Chicago club and was exactly as represented, except that the “journalist” 
was the author of Theme-Building . I did not bring up the subject 
of composition; the two men of affairs brought it up, as they so 
frequently do nowadays. To me their testimony came as a providential 
portent, for I was just then completing the first edition of Theme- 
Building ; and I inserted it as “A Prolog for Every Lesson.” Such testi¬ 
mony can be secured from professional or business men in your city. 
They are peculiarly persuasive to the minds of boys. Use them. For 
samples of how the motive is frequently appealed to in Theme-Build¬ 
ing see the Index, * 1 Business, ” ‘ ‘ Real life, ’ ’ and 11 Composition as 
freedom. ’ ’ 

No ‘ 1 Suggestions for Themes” are ever more than the merest sug¬ 
gestions; they should never be used because they are encountered in 
the passages from lesson to lesson. Nor should an assignment be oral 
because the book says oral, or written because the book says written. 
It should be taken at another time, or not taken at all, or be made with 
the tongue or the pen, according to the teacher’s judgment. In case 
of doubt always omit a ‘ ‘ Suggestion. ” 

But in this particular case the message is a vital one and should 
be conveyed to the class somehow at some time. It could be dramatized 
by having three students impersonate the characters and read the con¬ 
versation aloud. The report of the conversation (only a page and a 
quarter) could be assigned in connection with some other lesson, and 
a test given on “Why the engineer lost his contract.” 

A rather amusing, but thoroughly valid, example of how necessary 
pictures are nowadays is furnished by this clipping from a newspaper 
of the spring of 1924: 

Washington, D. C.—A moving picture exhibition show¬ 
ing the Chicago drainage canal and public works operated 
in connection with it, was presented to the house committee 
on rivers and harbors today, by Robert I. Randolph, vice 
president of the Chicago Association of Commerce. 

Mr. Randolph resorted to the use of moving pictures 
as a means of demonstrating just what Chicago had accom¬ 
plished by the expenditure of $30,000,000 to provide an 
efficient system for the disposal and dilution of sewage 
emptying into the Mississippi river through the channels 
of the local drainage canal and the Illinois river. 

The title, “A Picture in Spoken Words,” suggests that the “four 
forms of discourse ’ ’ are going to be featured in the theme assignments 
of Theme-Building. In one way that is true: the Lessons of Part III 
and the three cycles of Theme Suggestions are entitled Description, 
Exposition, etc. But this is only an outward form for convenience. 
For a discussion of purpose as the aim in using the old names of types 
see the comment on Lesson 21. 


58 


WORKWAYS FOR 


LESSON 4 


It might appear more logical to define compound sentences at the 
beginning of Lesson 1, and so announce in advance what general prin¬ 
ciple is going to be applied. But our human mind is never taught to 
best advantage in that way. We need to see certain facts and, after 
the facts are understood, to have them put together as a generalization. 
Our adult brains work exactly that way with any material that is new 
to us. Our logical summarizings in advance appear helpful to us only 
because we are already familiar with the details. Hence I should not 
spend time at this point with the abstraction of compound sentence, 
unless the class is already acquainted with it. What needs attention 
is the fact about but: it is another conjunction like and; it is an enemy 
in much the same way, though not nearly so powerful. The three open¬ 
ing paragraphs of the Lesson are useful as a beginning of a generaliza¬ 
tion, as preliminary notice of it; but they deserve no more stress. 

To distinguish between a strictly accurate use of but and a use that 
hardly gives a contrast is difficult. You will be surprised, if you 
examine a few dozen buts in a piece of literature that is not written 
by a very precise author, to find that we must not go very far in 
insisting on a clean-cut contrast. Say as much to the class, else you 
will find yourself in opposition to the facts in our classics. Yet it 
remains true that a student will train himself better if he regularly 
tries to use but for a definite opposition of ideas. The Exercise is 
not a comparison with literature, but is training in usual good policy. 

The happy mean between hair-splitting and careless indifference in 
teaching seems to be this: If you can make out any kind of contrast— 
even a rather doubtful one—don’t quibble; don’t accuse an author of 
wrong-doing. If you can show definitely that no contrast can be made 
out, consider that but is “mysterious.” 

Students are often amused, with beneficial results, at the sentences 
about yet and however on page 36. However is not, in itself or as 
used in literature, a pompous word; it has a pompous effect when used 
frequently in high-school writing. Why our young people like it and 
never think of yet has always been a source of amazement to me. I 
have tried to bring boys to share my curiosity. 






Comments on the Exeecise 

The six meaningless buts are in sentences 2, 5, 6, 11, 14, and 19. 
Possible revisions: 1. Though she had left the window hastily, she 
was walking very slowly by the time she reached the hall. 2. By the 
time a lot of other dogs had joined in the chase, all the barking .... 
(The but is really used in place of and.) 3. Mousie, who was usually 
a gentle creature, had fire in her eye today. 4. Use yet for but. 
•>. After they had been in love for many years, when he was over thirty- 
five years old, they were finally married. (The contrast in the writer’s 
mind was that “they had postponed a long while, but were finally 
married”; his words made the contrast appear to be between being in 
love and being married.) 6. By six o’clock, after we had been walking 
up and doA\ n the block for half an hour, the streets were almost empty. 



THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


59 


(There is no contrast between walking half an hour and the emptiness 
of the streets.) 7. In spite of our being so sure of the honesty of his 
motives, we have to admit. 8. Though this custom . . . ., it is serious. 
9. Use yet for but. 10. Although he. talks . . . ., yet I am sure. 
11. Now’, as it grew rapidly darker, the water lapped gently. (There 
is no contrast between the growing darkness and the lapping of the 
w r ater—unless darkness usually makes water rougher.) 12. This might 
be a good place to use nevertheless with a semicolon before it. 13. Use 
yet for but. 14. I’m tired of so many dances. I’ll tell you how we 
can avoid any more dancing—we can say, etc. (The contrast in the 
writer’s mind was “ There is no good reason why I should not keep 
on dancing, but I can pretend that there is a reason.”) 15. Mr. Bel¬ 
mont, though he glared and seemed foiled as he turned away, had the 
look of a man w’ho. (This way of placing the though clause is a varia¬ 
tion that seldom occurs to students.) 16. I couldn’t see much pleasure 
in Sam’s idea of pretending that we w r ere, etc. 17. Instead of but and 
a comma use a semicolon without any conjunction; the contrast will be 
stronger. 18. Since my visit to the Senate I have had to change my 
notion that senators are. 19. Bending her head to the driving wind, 
which beat the sleet into her face, she hurried around the corner. 
(There is no contrast between the bending of her head and the fact that 
there was sleet in the air; indeed that is the very reason why she bent 
her head.) 20. Although the theater may lose . . . ., yet it will gain. 

THE SLEEPING VOLCANO, PAGE 38 

Every picture should be regarded as a bit of material that might 
come in handy some time—provided no local topic is at hand. And 
it should be thought of as an invitation to go on a hunt for other 
topics. The book will be abused if a picture is regarded as a notice 
that means ‘‘At this point make a theme on Popocatepetl.” 

If the topic is used, the greatest requisite in assigning a theme 
would be to demand that some one definite purpose be carried out. 
Readers of entrance examinations in English are continually wondering 
why candidates do not notice the topic set, why they write without 
defining to themselves any particular purpose. To tell a class to 
“w’rite something about the volcano” is to invite them to injure their 
minds. “What one topic would you choose?” “Are you going to 
invent a romance or describe this particular mountain or explain what 
a volcano is?” “What one kind of effect are you aiming at?” “What 
is your plan, and wdiere is your goal?” Such are the questions that 
lead to good structure. 


LESSON 5 

There are several superstitions about certain small points of syntax 
which are firmly held by some teachers—for example, that a preposi¬ 
tion should never come at the end of a sentence. Though you show 
them the examples of how Shakespeare and Lamb and all the rest often 
closed sentences with prepositions, they continue to feel that all makers 
of classics have violated a kind of moral law which is superior to the 
facts of usage. One of the superstitions is that a coordinating 


60 


WORKWAYS FOR 


conjunction should not begin a sentence. It flourishes everywhere 
despite the fact that Macaulay in the Essay on Johnson began four 
dozen sentences with hut, a dozen with yet, and other dozens with and, 
for, and nor. 

Another belief about conjunctions which seems to me hardly more 
than a superstition is that we can always tell precisely whether a con¬ 
nective is subordinating or coordinating. The greatest grammarian of 
English, Matzner, confessed that the distinction was too subtle for him 
in the case of for. I quote two paragraphs from the Pilot Boole 
bearing on this point: 

The fact of our language—never hinted at in the gram¬ 
mars—is that there is no possible way of drawing a line 
between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. In 
fact—prepare for a pleasant surprise—the distinction is of 
no consequence to us teachers. What we, as practical work¬ 
men, need to know is that if a conjunction means “but” it 
must have a comma before it, that so and for must at 
least have a comma before them. So glide over the discus¬ 
sions that might arise about the first paragraph of the 
lesson. It is inserted to help classes in which much is 
made of the classification of conjunctions, and to help 
teachers who have supposed that the classification had 
something to do with punctuation. 

(There is a w r ay of distinguishing the two kinds of con¬ 
junctions, provided we abandon the standard definition; 
it is an analysis for which I am indebted to Mr. Henry 
C. Edgar of the Hotchkiss School: 4 ‘If a conjunction can 
stand first in the sentence, it is subordinating; if it cannot 
stand there and refer to what follows, it is coordinating.” 

For example, we can begin a sentence with an as or a 
because, but we cannot begin with a for clause that applies 
to what follows; hence as and because are subordinating; 
for is coordinating.) 

The other connecting words in compound sentences (like however, 
still, nevertheless, therefore, etc.) are not grammatical conjunctions, but 
are adverbs, before which a semicolon must be used. See the Appendix, 
pages 493 and 509, and compare the emphasis put on this distinction in 
Sentence and Theme. So is not recognized as a conjunction by the 
older dictionaries, and many schools require that a semicolon shall 
always be used before it. For may often be called subordinating, if 
its meaning is not to be distinguished from because / while is regarded 
as subordinating. The correlatives like either . ... or are difficult 
to use properly for coordinate clauses and are not usual in school 
writing. They are treated on page 497. 

One set of revisions: 1. In spite of the fact that the score was 
against us . . . ., still we felt. ( In spite of the score*s being is 
eminently correct according to the textbook rules, but it would not find 
much favor with American makers of literature, and none whatever in 
England. In spite of the score being is the natural and proper idiom. 
See Sentence and Theme, Pevised, page 376.) 2. As the window 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


61 


was . . . I was. 3. If you do not . . . ., you will suffer. 4. The 
reason why the gruff guard suddenly grew so polite may have been that. 
5. There was no sign that the bait had been touched or that the rats 
had been near the trap. 6. I decided to close the window and shut 
out the unbearable noise from the road. 7. Begin with though I was 
8 . I am going to hide myself for a few days in the home of a friend, a 
camp at the very end of the canon. 9. Why do you think it is good 
economy to buy these cheap stockings that, you know by experience, 
will lose their luster after they are laundered? 10. When we reached 
the rear of the train, we saw a thrilling sight—the engine of the second 
section, which had stopped within a yard of our observation platform. 
11. To me, who had been paying no attention, the question didn’t mean 
anything. 12. In spite of the cry from every part of the country for 
really fine pictures, no owner of a theater wants to show them without 
assurance of their popularity. (That model of a simple sentence is not 
admirable, but it is a good exhibit of possibilities. A complex sentence 
containing an appositive is this: No owner of a theater w r ants to show 
the really fine pictures—the sort for which there is a cry from every 
part of the country—unless he is sure they will be popular.) 13. It 
was a well-displayed advertisement, one that had caught. 14. Mr. 
Keeble, though he had hardly any knowledge of horse-racing, always 
took pride. 15. You have two options: to give Phyllis .... or to 
sell your own share. 16. He will be so afraid to tell .... that you 
can feel. 17. The kind of handbrush that I want seems hard to find— 
one that won’t lose. 18. Please don’t continue this discussion any 
longer, because I shall not lend. (If this sentence, with a because 
clause, is accepted as complex, and then if the for in number 19 is said 
to make a compound sentence, students have a grievance. Put yourself 
on their side. The distinction is a pure technicality, but it is generally 
agreed by grammarians that for is to be called coordinating. And there 
is a big difference: we may shift a because clause to the beginning 
of a sentence, but we cannot shift a for clause.) 19. Lottie—sure that 
she had hidden the bagful of nickels in some place that she couldn’t 
remember—kept .wondering about it. 20. I can assure you that these 
spark-plugs, costing only a trifle more, are worth the difference. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 45 

If a student feels no more impetus to describe than a school re¬ 
quirement to make a picture, he will not improve. If he can believe 
that making a picture is a necessary part of successful advertising or 
explaining or persuading, he will feel a very different kind of dignity 
about this task. 

Improvement comes by “ noticing why some themes fail and some 
succeed.” (See the discussion about criticizing stories in the com¬ 
ment on Lesson 43.) Such noticing is criticism. We all have an un¬ 
fortunate distrust of criticism, partly because it reminds us of fault¬ 
finding and partly because it does not seem “constructive.” But it 
is the key to all success in cultivating style. People who do well in 
composition are those who forever notice what authors do and how 
amateurs fail. They are criticizing with a view to improvement. 


62 


WORK WAYS FOR 


LESSON 6 

‘ 1 Unless you are somewhat of an artist’ ’ lias been a useful formula 
to me. It keeps me on the side of literary models; it prevents any 
forward student from saying to me, “Ah, ha, but see what an author 
did.” It also puts a contentious student on the defensive; I have not 
forbidden him anything, but have required him to claim that he is 
somewhat of an artist before he can plead a right to do what the artists 
do. He does not like to put forward such a claim. 

A two-conjunction sentence will not sound unpleasant to the average 
student, and a three-conjunction sentence will sound unpleasant. So I 
find it profitable to work back from a form on -which we agree to one 
about which he is dubious. 

The use of the semicolon (bottom of page 47) is not difficult and is 
a godsend to a student who learns it. The advice on page 48 (to sub¬ 
ordinate ideas) will go much farther and is more generally useful. 

The five sentences that lend themselves best to the use of a semi¬ 
colon are 1, 4, 5, 8, and 10. Possible revisions: 1. Use a semicolon 
before but. 2. Though the horse was now so very old that he wasn’t 
of any use on the farm, still they kept. 3. Writing one composition a 
week would have been a rather difficult task if I had not been allowed 
over Sunday for it. 4. Use semicolon before but ; for so use and so. 
5. Use semicolon before but. 6. Since the owner made no effort to 
stop the parrot’s confounded din, I moved. 7. Not knowing of any 
better way to kill time, I wandered into a movie theater—only to find 
that there was no vacant seat. 8. Use semicolon before so. 9. I can’t 
even offer you my own bed for the night, because soipeone has stolen 
the only one I have—a cot. 10. Use semicolon before but. 11. Her¬ 
man, who was afraid of her and didn’t want to start any trouble, kept 
very still. 12. Because the hay for the animals was getting low, we 
decided, after we had been imprisoned for three days, to try to break. 
13. Contains a hall, to the right of which is a living-room, and to the 
left of which are stairs. 14. These immigrants kept the pair of canaries 
in the cage so carefully covered up that I had no chance. 15. Since I 
had worked hard most of the winter and thought there was no need of 
keeping up the effort when spring came, I relaxed. 


LESSON 7 

I have always feared to make much use of the formidable expression 
“subordination” in classroom talk, for it sounds like a mystic process. 
The word serves well in a lesson title and in the recitation on this as¬ 
signment; it is a good word to advertise an idea. But for producing 
results week after week I rely on the familiar slogans, “Begin with a 
modifier,” “Use complex sentences,” “Drop that and.” 

Be sure that every student sees the point of the second paragraph 
on page 51: “The result may not be a good model to imitate.” Such 
a prolonged process and such a very compressed sentence are not models. 
They show, in an exaggerated way, what the possibilities always are. 
It is easy to use one or two of the devices in a sentence. 

Emphasize also the statement on page 52 about from BongTcong, and 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


63 


the oft-repeated invitation to use two verbs with one subject, and the 
advice about appositives. Repetition is the mother of good teaching. 
Unless we recur often to these specially useful devices, we shall not 
cause them to grow in composition. 

A set of simple sentences: 1. Ever since getting out of bed, three 
hours ago, I’ve been trying to reach Cynthia. 2. Pure blue—the color 
of the flow T er called a ‘ ‘periwinkle. ’ ’ 3. Before long we shall have to 

sell this pair of andirons, and perhaps some of the chairs too. 4. Of 
course my liking for Uncle Jake is no sign of my liking all the work 
on his farm. 5. On account of my mother’s nervousness this spring we 
are going to take a cottage at Dugmore, two miles from the trolley line. 
6 . My job, really a very hard one, pays pretty well now because of two 
increases in salary since January. 7. Omit and that is. 8. There really 
seemed to be good reason for his hope of advancing quickly from his 
clerk’s position. 9. To the gentle Mr. Weymouth, brought up in every 
luxury, this room seemed. 10. The small brick building next to the 
big cement store was occupied by the peculiar newspaper of Horn 
Gulch. 11. The terror-stricken youths dared not do anything, for fear 
of waking their undesirable guest. 12. After leaving Father’s lodge 
up there somewhere and growing bewildered I had to follow. 13. From 
the windows of our home down by the seashore—a gray house with green 
trimmings—we have a fine view of the sea. 14. An examination through 
my telescope immediately proved that it was a very large python. 15. 
Burning your hand on the hot hood in trying to unscrew the cap makes 
you want to swear. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 56 

Many other examples of the need of good explanation will appeal 
to the class. We should all like to know about the general principles 
of radio, but who tells us in plain terms how sound is converted to 
electric waves and back again? All manufacturers and scientists and 
managers covet the ability to explain clearly. • 

So far as possible the topics chosen for such a preliminary effort 
at exposition should not veer to mere description of the steps of a 
process (like then and then and then in making a cake) ; nor should 
they degenerate into a narrative (like my visit to a brick-yard). An 
effort should be made in every case to explain some reason that we 
have learned about, but that our audience does not understand. 


LESSON 8 

Ask the class why they suppose the word previous occurs three times 
in the first sentence. If they discover that the monotony of it empha¬ 
sizes the unpleasant monotony of uniform sentences, they will have a 
useful hint about the difference between aimless repetition and repeti¬ 
tion for emphasis. 

In spite of all a book can say, and in spite of a teacher’s stress 
through the first seven Lessons, many students will come to class with 


64 


WORKWAYS FOR 


the impression that a short sentence is f * bad.’ ’ Of course a short 
sentence is good. A composition which contained no short sentence 
would be monotonous and artificial. So call special attention to the 
word ‘ ‘ uniformly ’ ’ in the Wisconsin announcement; if every sentence 
in a series is short, monotony exists; monotony is the crime. 

A novice teacher (and some directors of education who have not 
been teachers) might wonder w r hy page 59 repeats w r hat has been said in 
recent Lessons, summarizing again what has been previously summar¬ 
ized. The fact is that the amount of repetition in the book is only a 
slight indication of the amount that must be made in class throughout 
the year if the principles are to take root in young minds and produce 
better sentences from lips and pens. The difficulty is not that stu¬ 
dents are slow or indifferent, for they wall recite well enough about the 
principles; they know the precepts. The difficulty is that we are at¬ 
tempting to break up fixed habits of a lifetime and to create new habits. 
To break up an old habit is a herculean feat; to establish a new one re¬ 
quires endless patience. No human mind could imagine those two 
truths, for they pass the understanding of even experienced teachers 
who have learned them. When we try to change sentence forms, we are 
altering a whole process of mentality—a labor as prolonged as it is 
wholesome. Don’t be deceived by the fewness and simplicity of the 
devices for avoiding monotony. They are a revolution of the intellect. 
They require repetition. 

It is true—and few students will ever notice the fact without in¬ 
struction—that an occasional direct quotation or command or ques¬ 
tion brightens a whole page of a theme (page 60). It is equally true 
that the various efforts to lengthen sentences and subordinate ideas 
and introduce novel types of sentences will result in artificiality in the 
style of a student who is over-conscientious or who expects to achieve 
variety by merely following recipes. Sluggish students are in no dan¬ 
ger of this kind, but the active and eager ones need the caution at the 
bottom of page 60. Especially in the Exercise a teacher will have a 
chance to warn students who are overdoing and to approve of the 
recasting that has not gone too far, but is smooth and natural. For 
example, one short sentence in number. II would be an artistic touch, 
though it happened that the author, whose thoughts were on his whole 
page of sentences, did not make a short one in this group. 

I. The fire that we had used for a marshmallow-roast that after¬ 
noon was still going. Around the live coals of this we four crowded 
until we were very hot. Then we ran to a. high rock, stood in line, 
waiting for a large wave, and dived in. By the end of half an hour 
of swimming we were cold again. So back to the fire we went. 

II. The author, Archibald Rutledge, wrote the series thus in Tom 
and I on the Old Plantation: 

All of us knew the history of the table; and on several 
occasions my brother and I had pleaded in vain for per¬ 
mission to go in search of it. I think the reason for the 
refusal was that there lived at Bear Wallow a negro named 


THEME - BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


65 


West McConnor, who was a thorough desperado. He was 
a hunter and woodsman famous over three counties—a wild 
and ranging spirit, who was suspected of all kinds of law¬ 
lessness, and at whose door could be laid the evidence of 
three murders. Knowing all these facts, we had become 
rather reconciled to not going up the river, and were sur¬ 
prised when father himself suggested it. 

III. Scott’s sentences, at the end of Chapter V of The Heart of 
Midlothian, are as follows: 

They eagerly relieved each other at the labor of assail¬ 
ing the Tolbooth door; yet such was its strength that it 
still defied their efforts. At length a voice was heard to 
pronounce the words: “Try it with fire.” The rioters, 
with a unanimous shout, called for combustibles, and as all 
their wishes seemed to be instantly supplied, they were 
soon in possession of two or three empty tar-barrels. A 
huge, red-glaring bonfire soon arose close to the door of 
the prison, sending up a tall column of smoke and flame 
against its antique turrets and strongly grated windows, 
and illuminating the ferocious faces and wild gestures of 
the rioters who surrounded the place, as well as the pale and 
anxious groups of those who, from windows in the vicinage, 
watched the progress of this alarming scene. The mob 
fed the fire with whatever they could find fit for the 
purpose. The flames roared and crackled among the heaps 
of nourishment piled on the fire, and a terrible shout soon 
announced that the door had kindled and was in the act of 
being destroyed. The fire was suffered to decay, but, long 
ere it w r as extinguished, the most forward of the rioters 
rushed, in their impatience, one after another, over its yet 
smoldering remains. Thick showers of sparkles rose high 
in the air, as man after man bounded over the glowing em¬ 
bers and disturbed them in their passage. It was now ob¬ 
vious to Butler, and all others who were present, that the 
rioters would be instantly in possession of their victim, and 
have it in their power to work their pleasure upon him, 
whatever that might be. 


SUGGESTIONS FOR THEMES, PAGE 63 

This idea will seem rather playful to most students, but will, in fact, 
give a kind of evidence that has been very useful to me in my own 
work. It will show that some of the best theme-writers produce ex¬ 
cellent results at the first draft and do not need to revise. The old 
rhetorical theory of careful polishing and rewriting is not true for 
many students and many authors. It is known that Thackeray and 
George Eliot wrote their most powerful scenes at top speed and never 
attempted to improve, when their blood had grown cold, upon what was 


66 


WORKWAYS FOR 


created when minds were hot with purpose. That fact does not prove 
that students should not make a second draft. But neither does Gray’s 
seven-year polishing prove that they should w r rite a third draft if they 
would attain excellence. The fact is that we know very little about the 
best advice to give students on outlining and revising. We tell them 
to foresee and make a detailed plan in advance; then w r e find that some 
admirable theme was begun with a certain plan, -which w r as altered com¬ 
pletely during the making of the second paragraph, and which shaped 
itself so quickly, and without contrivance, that the writer would actually 
have interfered with his mind if he had stopped to alter his precon¬ 
ceived outline. 

Testimony about “how my mind made this essay” has never been 
given us by professionals, except in bits and doubtfully. Even in R. W. 
Brown’s The Writer’s Art, a compilation of all such evidence as he 
could gather, there is little revelation of how authors have gone to work. 
And even that little must be taken with allowances, because authors 
are often poor analyzers of their own processes—witness Wordsworth 
and Frost. Such analysis is difficult, and we must bear this in mind 
when we assign the topic. We should also bear in mind that authors 
have not been willing to display to a curious w r orld the odd maneuvers, 
the blank moments, the inspirations that came from no logic, the make¬ 
shifts by which they carried out a course that they had not anticipated. 

The remarks about authors do not indicate that class discussion 
should turn on what professionals have done, but show how unknown 
and interesting a subject we are approaching when we try to tell “how 
my mind makes a theme.” Good student writers are authors. Their 
processes in writing verse or story are fundamentally the same as the 
operations of the makers of classics—not in any sense of 11 let’s play 
that,” but actually. What these school authors have to tell us is of 
the highest interest, and they have never been solicited to tell w T hat they 
know. Such inquiry as I have made of boys shows that the best waiters 
seldom care to make an outline in advance. They conform to my re¬ 
quirements by making up the outline after they are through writing! 
If I, in my zeal for ancient suppositions, should tell them they were 
wrong, should adjure them to follow the wisdom of all the textbooks, I 
should be foolish. The part of sound sense is to try to learn from 
them how their minds work when they make themes. I had rather be in 
line with these facts than with all the theory that has been written 
since Aristotle. 

It is an alluring subject; to me it is exciting. I should guess that 
before long some teacher will gather a bundle of evidence from stu¬ 
dents, digest and compile it, contribute it to the English Journal, and 
startle the school w r orld into noticing what the facts are. It is more 
than likely that by 1950 all our textbook method of prevision and out¬ 
lines and topic sentences will be considered scholastic lumber, fit only 
for a bonfire. 

I have found that boys like to teach me something about composi¬ 
tion, instead of sitting forever receptive to my platitudes about how they 
ought to work. I believe that in pedagogic circles this attitude toward 
students is called “socializing.” Perhaps “project” is the right term. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


67 


LESSON 9 

No student will write well until he has learned to link sentences 
carefully. In that sense this Lesson is important. In Part I of 
WorJcways I have called it much less important than any of the first 
eight Lessons because it is less elementary, less necessary in laying 
foundations. All depends on the advancement of the student. If a 
class is floundering in sentence-improvement, it should not be carried 
into Lesson 9; if an A section is facile with sentences, it should be 
held to a high standard of coherence between sentences after studying 
Lesson 9. A plan of using Lesson 16 before Lesson 9 is given in the 
comment on Lesson 16. 

The key to all coherence in passing from sentence to sentence is 
given at the bottom of page 65, though the illustration is, for the sake 
of emphasis, a paragraph transition. ‘ ‘ What have I now made a reader 
think about?” is the question an author instinctively asks himself as he 
finishes each sentence. To ask the question is to be alive to the right 
way of beginning the next one. No formula will suffice. If a class is 
taught that there is virtue in link words, students will fall in love with 
however and moreover and nevertheless. All link words will come 
naturally enough to the page if a writer is thinking of transferring a 
reader. But if he is thinking of using link words, he will put artificial 
impediments in the way of a reader. I have learned to dread the 
mention of link words in class, so greedily do students fasten on them 
and so blindly do they trust them. 

Just as students are prone to think a Lesson has told them that 
“all compound sentences are bad,” so they are likely to gather the 
idea that “there should always be transition words between sentences.” 
Here is another appearance of the general principle that we want per¬ 
petual variety; we like some beginnings to be abrupt. The meaning of 
the Lesson might be more apparent if the title were put negatively: 
‘ ‘ Don’t be careless when you pass from one sentence to the next. ’ ’ There 
is no commandment to use transfer words. We are told to notice 
what we have said and to be always mindful of a reader’s convenience— 
“to be as considerate of your hearers or readers as Goldsmith was.” 

The Exercise could be written thus: 

1. The conversation around the fireplace. 2. “Entered into conversa¬ 
tion,” mentioning the Harrison campaign. 3. Describing incidents of 
‘ ‘ that memorable campaign. ” 4. “ Incidents ’ ’ are correct, but friend’s 
age questioned. 5. Friend is “old” enough to remember. 6. Question 
of “how old?”; answer “Born in 1847.” 7. Dispute about remembering 
“birthday.” 8. Campaign had been “in 1840.” 9. Friend’s “his¬ 

torical knowledge” (i. e., of the correctness of the date of 1840) causes 
him to be at a loss to account for memory. 10. Sees that his “memory” 
is wrong. 11. Sent to live with uncles in 1855. 12. “These uncles” had 
told of scenes in Harrison campaign. 13. “All this” became real 
“mental pictures.” 14. Could not distinguish “the reproduced inci¬ 
dents” of the campaign. 15. “Recollections of his experience” (i. e., 
of the incidents reproduced by his uncles) was dissociated from his 
historical knowledge. 


68 


WORKWAYS FOR 


KEEPING THE WORLD SAFE FOR COMMERCE, PAGE 70 

While writing WorTcways I have seen in a newspaper an article 
about the Bear, entitled ‘‘Another Last Cruise for the Sturdy Bear. I 
give some quotations: 

The Coast Guard cutter Bear, soon to start for Arctic 
waters on her thirty-eighth annual voyage to the Far 
North, is soon to be discarded, according to plans in Con¬ 
gress for an appropriation of $925,000 to replace the 
Avooden Bear with a neAv steel vessel. 

Men of the Coast Guard, however, are somewhat skep¬ 
tical when the retirement of the Bear is mentioned. They 
recall that she has made a “last” voyage to the polar 
basin every year for several years. 

The Bear is the veteran of the service and has had an 
adventurous career. She was built in Greenock, Scotland, 
in 1874, for the British Government. 

Since 1886 the craft has been making annual cruises 
into the Arctic. North of Nome the cutter goes from 
village to village on the coast of the Bering Sea. She 
carries medical equipment and supplies of all sorts. 

In the north, the Bear is known as the “Good Samari¬ 
tan.” One of her many notable rescues was that of the 
crew of the whaler James Allen in Seguam Pass in 1894. 

Last year the cutter cruised more than 16,000 miles 
on the Bering Sea, Arctic Ocean, and along the Siberian 
coast. 

LESSON 10 

The emphasis in teaching link Avords should be against the mere 
connectives like nevertheless and hence and thus; it should encourage 
such real references as repeating Avords and saying “for that reason,” 
“during this time.” See especially the paragraph at the top of 
page 73. 

The nonsense paragraph on page 73 has been effective in my 
classes as a concrete example of Iioav the most complete linking with 
Avords may insure nothing but mystifying incoherence of thought. 
Mere Avords will not make coherent linking. The illustrative para¬ 
graph on page 74 is of the opposite kind: it does not seem very bad 
at first reading and is not likely to convey its message unless I give 
it a boost. If a little time is spent with it, if each sentence is read 
aloud, and a student tells Avhat he has noAV been made to think about, 
the paragraph Avill be effective. (I chose it just because it is not 
startlingly incoherent, but is a typical example of rambling away 
from any topic that we think we can fasten on.) In the first sentence 
Ave take dinners to poor families; the second sentence is elaborately 
joined to this by the first ten Avords and then shoots suddenly and 
far to Christmas, to a party, and to children; then the third sentence 
is also profusely linked by eleven Avords, and concludes with “the size 
and success ’ ’ of the party. The more a class dAvells on this innocent¬ 
looking trio of sentences, the more it will see that the writer Avas re- 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


69 


lying on verbal links and was quite forgetting to care what thoughts 
she was linking. The thoughts are the important element of a series 
of sentences. 

The Exercise is difficult, more difficult than you would suppose 
at first reading. In assigning it call attention to “put sentences in 
a different order, ’ ’ and urge the class to feel free to make any altera¬ 
tions they like. A student who keeps his eyes within the sentences of 
the Exercise and labors to hitch them together as they stand will go 
through much painful exertion for nothing. The right way to work is 
to stand away from the sentences, to see what the general course of the 
narrative is, and then to set down the natural steps of it coherently. 
Such a task would be improperly difficult if the subject matter were 
prosy, but the story of Pooch and the grizzly has a certain momentum 
of its own that will lighten labor. 

Perhaps, if you fear that the class will be daunted by the Exercise, 
it might be good policy to read the following original sentences to them 
while their books are closed. They will not get much direct help in 
this way, but will see the general nature of what they have to do. 

In order to bring the passage to its climax I have had to omit 
most of the description of the fight between the bear and the terriers. 
Mr. James’s sentences are as follows: 

Word came to Miller one day of a huge grizzly bear 
that was taking toll from the herds that cattlemen had 
loosed in the hills for the summer pasturage. Cow punchers 
had seen him and had pursued him in desultory fashion, but 
he was a cunning old fellow and eluded such hunters with 
seeming ease. So Miller was called upon to rid the com¬ 
munity of this undesirable citizen. 

The Pooch sensed that something of great moment was 
in the offing. She sniffed around Miller’s heels as he got 
together his camp outfit and roped it on a pack horse. 

Her excitement knew no bounds when the boss released 
his terrier pack. She had had but little to do with these 
outsiders, and fain would have engaged in combat with cer¬ 
tain ones that passed rude remarks concerning her personal 
appearance and its suggestive origin. But a sharp word 
from the boss quelled all such desires for the moment. 


Now Miller was a fervent admirer of the courage, the 
intelligence, the tireless perseverance and the lightning-like 
dash of the wire-haired terrier, but he was an experienced 
hunter and he knew the limitations of these little gamesters 
as well as their strong points. Nature had endowed them 
with all the virtues of the hunting dog, save the nose for 
the trail. They would attack anything they saw, but on 
a cold track they were useless. Therefore, in the famous 
Miller pack there were two keen-scented hounds, tolerated 
by the terriers for their ability as trackers, but regarded 
as strictly out of it when their clannish little crew swung 
into the chase. 




70 


WORKWAYS FOR 


On the second day out a hound suddenly bayed “Cold 
track.” The terriers heard and understood his message 
as well as did Miller. The second trailer soon chimed in, 
and presently the wise pair were following up the bear’s 
track, six whining, quivering terriers in their wake, greatly 
hindering the painstaking efforts of the hounds, did they 
but know it, in their impatience to come at grips with the 
killer. 

All that long day the hounds scented the path for Miller 
and his fighters. The trail led over ridge and down draws, 
through patches of timber and over rocky divides. Now the 
bay of the hounds would indicate a warmer scent, and the 
sharp yapping of the terriers would add to the excitement. 
But still no bear. The wary old animal was keeping well 
in advance and out of sight. 

And first in the van at every turn was the Pooch. 
Something wonderfully exciting was about to happen, she 
sensed, and you could bet your bottom dollar she was going 
to be in on it, whatever it was. Cocky, self-sufficient, she 
even tried to give directions to the experienced Mike, and 
the leader of the pack—on business bent and friendship 
forgotten for the time—was forced to halt proceedings ever 
and anon to tell this fresh interloper just where to get off. 
But it didn’t faze the Pooch. Next moment she was 
more cocky than ever. 

At last to Miller ’s strained ears came the sound he had 
awaited so long, the howling bark of old Pete that told of 
a hot scent. The message was repeated again and again. 
The bear was close at hand. 

Nose to the trail, the hounds did not see what met the 
quick eyes of the Pooch, far in advance of the terrier pack. 
Fifty yards ahead she discovered a huge silver-gray form, 
turning, turning with bruin’s peculiar inquisitiveness to as¬ 
certain the cause of all the tumult to the rear. She made 
for the bear at full gallop. Mike’s shrill bark brought the 
rest of the pack to his heels as he bounded up the slope 
after her. 

In about four Greenwich-chronometer seconds the big 
grizzly was surrounded by a snarling, snapping circle of 
tormentors. Whichever way he turned he was attacked 
from the rear by a little puffball of white that nipped him 
and darted to safety as he clumsily swung to fend off the 
attack. 

The Pooch launched herself straight for the jaws 
of death. Attacking from the side, she flung out of the 
reach of those snapping tusks, and her teeth fastened on 
the bear’s tender and vulnerable snout. 

With a roar of agonized anger the grizzly reared and 
struck at the dog with his paw, exactly as a greatly an¬ 
noyed old gentleman would brush a pestiferous fly off his 
nose. The blow struck the Pooch fair, and she was torn 



THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


71 


loose, rolling end over end to strike against a bowlder and 
lie still. 

A shot rang out, and the grizzly toppled over, mortally 
wounded. A second shot ended his murderous career. . . . 

She was able to sit up at the camp fire that evening and 
partake of considerable nourishment, which consisted in 
the main of fresh bear meat. 

THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 77 

Argument, as w r e older people all know from experience, is by far 
the most difficult kind of composition: it requires, if it is really to 
be persuasive, more art and tact than exposition. If a class has had 
some previous training in argument, it can take this assignment early 
in the year. If it has had very little practice in argument, the best 
tactics will be not to undertake this Suggestion until Lesson 27 has 
been covered. Any effort to produce real structure in an argument 
will be abortive until a class has had some definite advice and has 
examined some models. 

Weigh the statement in the first paragraph that “ argument is a 
goal.” It would be easy to overstate the truth, but it has been useful 
to me by giving a kind of unity to my teaching of the different types 
of composition. (For remarks on “types” as dangerous see the 
comments on Lesson 21.) I would not press it or imply that it is 
a philosophy of underlying principles. All I mean is that a student 
often sees a perspective of purpose ahead if he is shown how narration 
and description are necessary to exposition, and how exposition is the 
greatest ingredient of persuasive argument, and how, therefore, there 
is a natural sequence which is not due to mere textbook classification. 

LESSON 11 

The definition and treatment of paragraphs in this Lesson may not 
be eternal truth; it may be that some other way of regarding para¬ 
graphs will ultimately be found better for school practice. If you 
feel that you have an inkling of that better way, adapt the exercises 
to your own method and discard the text. I will not argue for my 
way of treating paragraphs; I know that every teacher insensibly 
works into a vcay of constructing his own paragraphs, and must then 
suppose that his w r ay is best for students. I have always tried to 
avoid that supposition and to discover what appealed best to, boys. 
All I can do in a textbook is to write out my classroom practice. 
If I try to give a symposium of what various textbooks say, I shall 
give nothing definite. The formula of “a new scene, a new time” is 
effective in eighth-grade and ninth-grade narrative; from that point 
it can easily be advanced to cover description and exposition. It 
seems, to my prejudiced senses, that the formula brings results. I have 
not yet encountered in any educational journal or any textbook, or 
in talk with any teacher, a device that sounds any better. No college 
instructor who appraises school products has advised me of a place 
where some better method seems to be used. But I am going to keep 


72 


WORKWAYS FOR 


my eyes and ears open for that other method. It might appear 
somewhere. 

Beyond the arbitrary usages of Sections A and B the gist of the 
teaching about paragraphs is at the bottom of page 80: “The author’s 
signal that here is a different topic.” It is never safe to assume that 
a given series of coherent sentences would have to be divided into 
paragraphs at certain demonstrable points. One author may wish 
to hoist a signal for one reason; another author may wish to show 
different emphasis. I have always wished that some university would 
publish the results of an experiment of this sort: mimeograph a pas¬ 
sage from Irving or Stevenson or Kipling, submit it to all the members 
of the English faculty for paragraphing, and tabulate the results and 
reasons. There would be a wholesome revelation of what a paragraph 
is. I once had a partial glimpse of it. In a rhetoric text that I used 
was a solid passage from Stevenson; though I tried to tolerate different 
possibilities of division into paragraphs if a boy could give a reason, 
I insisted that at one point there should not be a division. The next 
day a student showed me that Stevenson had divided at that point, 
You can now understand why I am skeptical about all the paraphernalia 
of paragraph structure that is to be found in textbooks, and why 
I say as a climax to the Lesson, on page 83, that “teachers often refrain 
from criticizing a questionable paragraph. ’ ’ 

Until you have experimented as long as I have, you will not 
believe the importance of naming specific topics in the Exercise. Each 
year I am more amazed by the utter inability of some students to 
specify; most of them seem never to perceive anything in a paragraph 
except a cloudy generality like “what he did next.” If I ask “But 
what did he do?” and receive the answer that he bored through the 
eaves-trough, I have a hard time to convince the boy that there is much 
difference between a ‘ ‘ what ’ ’ and an * ‘ eaves-trough. ’ ’ There is a whole 
world of educational difference. Often I have grown frenzied at 
the perpetual vagueness of answers and have yelled, ‘ ‘ Name something, 
name something; for heaven’s sake, specify.” At the time this rather 
mystifies a class, but years later they understand. 

Comments on the Exercises 

The demand for specifying is a large principle that applies all the 
way up the gamut from spelling to interpreting poetry. One reason 
why literature is poorly read—probably the greatest reason—is that 
we do not see the specific pictures that an author -sets before us. 
The difference between third-rate and first-rate verse is the difference 
between vague words and concrete images. Vagueness is a fundamental 
weakness; a large part of education is a training in specifying. Think 
of this when you handle the Exercises. Note the point in the last 
paragraph of the Lesson about “constructing his own paragraphs”; 
that is the big consideration for all textbook work with the subiect. 
bee m the Index “Specific answers required.” 

Number 1 is from near the end of “The Young Man of Great 
Expectations, m Tales of a Traveler, page 188 of the Lake Classics 
edition. The paragraphing differs somewhat in different editions. The 







THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


73 


original text was as follows: 1. “Well, sir”—the people in the room. 
2. “My uncle lay”—the details of the room that showed how my uncle 
had lived. 3. “ When I entered”—the greeting. 4. “Nephew”—his last 
words. 5. “I pressed”—his death. But other divisions are reasonable 
and proper. The first two of Irving’s paragraphs might be put to¬ 
gether; the last two sentences of the selection might be set apart as 
a closing paragraph, for the time is different and the topic may be 
said to be quite distinct from what precedes. 

Number 2 is from Dickens’s “The Wreck of the Golden Mary” (page 
122, A Christmas Carol, Lake Classics edition). A good deal of latitude 
must be allowed in this paragraphing if a student can name real topics. 
For example, sentences 15-17 might be made into a separate paragraph, 
called “going up on deck”; and sentences 18-26 might be divided after 
20. Dickens’s way, which shows the four scenes better, was: 1. “When I 
left”—calm and snug when I went to bed. 2. “I turned in .... all 
standing”—my thoughts before going to sleep. 3. “I dreamed”— 
troubled dreaming in my cabin. 4. “I could not see’’—getting the 
sail in and lighting up. 

Number 3. 1. “The moment Tom’s lessons”—killing time till 

school is out. 2. “Now the wheelwright was”—the feud with the 

wheelwright. 3. “Moreover, his presence”—alliance of the wheelwright 
and the master. (This might begin with the previous sentence, but 
is really another scene than the beginning of the quarrel; it is the 
warfare that developed, in which an alliance was made against Tom.) 
4. “This they would have found some difficulty in doing”—how Jacob 
Doodlecalf brought Tom to defeat. 5. ‘ ‘ The master, who was stoop¬ 
ing ’ ’—Tom is captured. 

LESSON 12 

Since I was not brought up on topic sentences, seldom used such 
a thing in my own writing except unconsciously, and never observed 
that the makers of our classics wmrried much about them, I have not 

been disposed to favor them in teaching. But they are so much 

recommended nowadays that I have been open to conviction. What 
I do or what authors do is no basis for judging what may be the 
best way of instructing boys and girls. 

Such trials as I have made do not reveal much help in my own 
work. Boys seem to feel that “topic sentence” is a kind of recipe, or 
even a panacea; they readily adopt a habit of posting this topical 
notice at the outset of each paragraph, sometimes underlining it The 
underlining seems to me symptomatic of an evil: boys are thinking 
of a topic sentence as a kind of detached announcement. There is 
a further bad result in my classes: many a boy feels that he has 
propitiated the devil of incoherence by offering up a sacrifice of a topic 
sentence to him, and therefore feels no fear of sin while he meanders 
on through the rest of the paragraph. 

It will not do for me to argue from these facts that another 
teacher, with different instincts and training, may not succeed very 
well by stressing topic sentences. I, can imagine that they might be 
made a very powerful implement for directing attention to unity and 
coherence. If you have not formed your opinions, give topic sentences 


74 


WORKWAYS FOR 


a chance; try them for a year; see what good and what harm they 
produce in your class. Here is a Lesson to help along. Perhaps if 
your class has in mind from the beginning that “this may be a very 
misleading device” (page 92), you will develop a method of using it 
as so many other teachers ha“ve done. My own emphasis in using 
the Lesson is this: “See the unity that the topic sentence reveals.” 

Comments on the seven paragraphs: 1. The natural and easy 
comment is that the paragraph treats of two processes, polishing and 
smoking. The two processes might be packed into a unified para¬ 
graph; but this writer implies that in his first four sentences he is 
talking about what goes on in a polishing-room, and that the smoking 
of the last two sentences is done somewhere else. He leaves us in 
doubt as to whether he thought of any topic. 2. This tells about the 
importance of coal, the time it has been in use, the two kinds; and 
it then announces the topic of the theme, “distillation.” All this in¬ 
formation might be stowed in a unified introductory paragraph, but it 
is not so stowed. We are not sure what idea the writer was trying 
to bring out. 3. Admirably constructed by a professional; it follows 
out the announced topic of “success and usefulness in varied fields of 
work. 7 7 Make this paragraph emphasize the real fault of the two 
previous ones: they did not fail because of containing two or three 
different items, but because of not combining the items with any one 
well-defined purpose. 4. The first four sentences develop the topic of 
“the effect of the quiet, refined home”; the last sentence veers off to 
11 he denied the truth of the anecdote, 7 7 and thus rather makes us wonder 
whether the first four sentences are true. The fault is really more 
one of emphasis than of unity. 5. The natural and easy comment is 
that the first two sentences are about “this lecture 77 and the last two 
sentences about “other lectures. 77 Yet that is no analysis of the fault. 
The trouble is that the lecture on war is not used as an illustration of 
the power of all good lectures; it does not lead up to that topic—as 
it could very easily be made to do. Excellent practice could be had by 
rewriting this paragraph for unity, making the war lecture point the 
way to the influence of all lectures, and arranging for a climax at 
“spiritual value. 7 7 6. The first three sentences tell about “using idle 

hours for making furniture 77 ; the last one tells about “the difficulties 
of going about this work.” Here is another example of how the mere 
items do not destroy unity; for the idea of surmounting difficulties 
could be blended with the previous idea of “time could be very well 
employed.” Ideas are plastic and can be molded into unity; but they 
will remain separate chunks unless a writer’s purpose molds them. 
7. Well unified about the one topic of “searching for Rosa. 77 

THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 95 

The book says once more that a planless composition is worse than 
no composition. Whenever in future the book omits to say that, a 
teacher should supply it. If every theme undertaken this year is defi¬ 
nite training in designing a structure, the class may gain an appre¬ 
hension of what real composition is. WTiat proportion of American 
high-school teachers dp you suppose are accustomed to assigning themes 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


75 


by saying, “Write a letter about something” or “Tell about what 
happened one day,” without indicating that the assignment is a job of 
architecture, of building a theme? 

“Are you expecting to apply what you have learned?” Many in 
your class will never realize, unless you make the emphasis, what a book 
can only suggest—that every Lesson is made for use, to be applied, and 
to be applied always. 


LESSON 13 

It could be said that this Lesson is indefinite, because it announces 
no definition, sets up no exact limits. It proceeds by an entirely dif¬ 
ferent method: it shows an obviously ununified paragraph that contains 
a clutter of ideas, and then it shows a set of obviously fragmentary 
paragraphs. Any sensible student will see what is wrong and will 
agree to the logic of the seven infantile paragraphs on page 98. Per¬ 
ceiving these faults is a valuable lesson, as illustrated by the last para¬ 
graph on page 98. If that boy had done no more than spend a quarter 
of an hour with some printed samples of broken bits of paragraphs, he 
could have avoided his major errors. 

Comments on the Exercise 

First Exercise. A. The first and fourth paragraphs speak of my 
first impression of Mantell; the second and third tell why Mantell is a 
great artist—because no one thought of him as a person, but only as the 
Hamlet of the play. All the material could be put together in a unified 
paragraph about ‘ ‘ The first moment of Mantell’s appearance proved 
that he is a great actor.” B. Good and necessary paragraphs for dia¬ 
log. C. The first paragraph is a typical example of an “introduction” 
that ought to be merely the first sentence of an opening paragraph. If 
this and the second paragraph and the first sentence of the third para¬ 
graph were put together, we should have a unified result, but a lumber¬ 
ing and needless preliminary announcement of what is to follow. This, 
like number A, shows how broken bits are most likely to occur and to be 
most tiresome when a student attempts to “introduce” his subject. 
D. A typical case of a paragraph, that is thought to be unified on such 
a topic as 11 setting a room to rights, ’ ’ and that has a sort of unity; 
but it is a heaped-up clutter. An interesting experiment is to chart on 
the board what the arrangement of furniture was and to try to discover 
what unity of purpose there was in the arrangement. It will appear 
that two sides of the room were pretty fully occupied, that free space 
was left on the other side, beyond the foot of the bed. Now, could 
this evident purpose be a guide to making a purposeful and unified 
paragraph? E. Very well unified on the topic of “determined to start 
that engine.” The first three sentences show why there was need of 
determination. F. A sad heap of things after the first three sentences: 
shower, shallow end for non-swimmers, lockers. Yet how good a para¬ 
graph might be made of these very materials if they began with the 
shower and were so worded as to bring out “the fun of diving and 
splashing. ’ ’ 


76 


WORKWAYS FOR 


Second Exercise. The first paragraph may well be left as it is. If 
the present fourth paragraph folloivs this, its “cause of the eternal 
haze” will make a good link with the “clouds of smoke” m the first; 
and the material of the third paragraph belongs with this and could 
follow it. The second paragraph of the new theme would then be about 
11 first glimpses through the smoke, ’ ’ but there ought to be changes of 
wording and emphasis to make the paragraph orderly. A third para¬ 
graph could be built out of numbers 7 and 2, in that order, telling what 
is seen far to the right—the river and a train rushing along its bank. 
The large public buildings of 6 and 8 are at the left (for in 8 we “turn 
back” from the right), and probably the state capitol of 5 is in that 
direction. So a third paragraph could be made by massing all this 
architecture. A natural order would be 8, 5, 6, because then we should 
conclude with “this enormous city is guided,” which is a good close 
for the description. Number 9 could stand as it is, a rather clever way 
of drawing the veil. 


TABBY’S ADOPTED CHILDREN, PAGE 102 

It is likely that half the members of the class can contribute some 
case of the caring for an orphan by a foster-mother that was a differ¬ 
ent sort of animal. It is always a pleasing subject. When the pleasure 
of it has warmed the minds of the class, indicate (without dashing cold 
water) that a reader or an audience will not feel our interest if we tell 
a formless narrative. What episode was most charming? Fix on that 
as a goal and work toward it. 


LESSON 14 

The phrase “straight line” is one of those curious discoveries that 
we come upon sometimes when our minds are striving unusually hard to 
make an idea concrete to a class. It has been as useful to me as “that 
particular” is for explaining when a modifier is restrictive—an expres¬ 
sion which is not a definition, not all-inclusive, and not entirely logical, 
but which has power to fix an idea and make it go 'to work. So 
11 straight line ’ ’ is not a perfect metaphor and would not do as a cri¬ 
terion in a treatise on rhetoric. I have never had any interest in a 
treatise. My only interest is to find those practical teacher’s tricks 
that will cause actions in young brains. 

One day I was expatiating upon an incoherent theme which opened 
with a morning scene, advanced to afternoon, and then, without warn¬ 
ing, plunged back to morning. 11 This writer, ’ ’ said I, ‘ ‘ has made me 
dizzy. He swings me in a circle. I feel as if I had looped the loop. 
A theme ought to go straight ahead.” (Then my hands went into 
action.) “This theme, if it began in the morning, ought to move 
straight ahead—like this; watch my finger—to noon and afternoon 
and evening and the next day. It ought not to shoot me ahead and then 
jerk me around and set me down where I started. Every theme should 
go straight; it ought to carry me in a straight line of time or place.” 

The phrase “straight line” was an accident in a rather heated and 


THEME-BUILDING (BEVISED EDITION) 


77 


very inaccurate talk to a class. I had never till that moment spoken 
of a theme in terms of a “ straight line, ’ ’ and had no thought of speak¬ 
ing so again. But I fancied that the words had conveyed an idea. I 
heard a boy repeat it, grinning, as if it were an odd thing to say. So I 
repeated it, because it was odd. Next week it came in handy again to 
arrest attention and show another boy how his theme was as jagged as 
a flash of lightning. He could see that it was jagged when I charted 
the course of it with three lines on the blackboard. All the other boys 
could see. They took up the expression as a handy one for their own 
use when they had to criticize themes. It became our favorite term, 
because it applied so often and could be illustrated so convincingly. 
After I had put “straight line” into the first edition of Theme-Build¬ 
ing, I found that it was effective in print. Boys could report what the 
book had said and could apply the idea in judging their own com¬ 
position. 

Of course the phrase claims too much, for many a good chapter or 
paragraph does curve back to the starting-point. “Straight-line’’ is 
not an exact formula or a universal guide. But in my school it never 
did any harm and was always active in good works. It is here applied 
to paragraphs; in Lesson 17 it is applied to whole compositions. It is 
not nearly so much needed in teaching paragraphs as in whole composi¬ 
tions, but even in paragraphs my life would be rather dull without it. 

The “straight line in time” is nearer to a panacea for incoherence 
than I could ever have believed. A census of ten thousand incoherent 
paragraphs would probably show that 75% (very likely 90%) are 
faulty because of a violation of time order. Keep note during this year 
of how many paragraphs you see that are incoherent in some other 
way. You will be surprised at their relative scarcity. 

Now I am tempted to proceed into an essay on teaching, using 
“straight line” as a text. I could elaborate upon this general prin¬ 
ciple : A large part of a teacher’s art consists in singling out from a 
whole abstract genus of error, like “ incoherence, ’ ’ some individual, 
concrete error, like “looping back in time”; we never produce effects 
by reciting about a genus of error, but always by making some one 
error visible and tangible. I refrain from the essay. Already the 
world is full of wise philosophy addressed to teachers of English. 

“Shift” is, where I live, the most efficacious word to describe the 
place where incoherence occurs. Boys don’t like to be accused of 
“shifting”—there seems to be some unpleasant connotation in the 
verb which makes them uneasy. And “shift” makes a picture of the 
error. 

“Don’t assume,” says the Exercise, “that every paragraph is inco¬ 
herent. ’ ’ Many experiments with adults show how wide of the truth 
we shoot if we feel sure in advance that we are asked to criticize what 
is wrong. If we don’t know, if the chance is even that we are con¬ 
fronted with excellence in composition, then we have to sharpen our 
perceptions and be wary. Discrimination is the. necessity in all worth¬ 
while criticism. Every exercise in Theme-BuilSing tries to apply that 
truth by presenting a jumbled lot of good and bad. 

Another sad truth about adult criticism illustrates good policy in 
school: We are all prone to pick at some slight flaw, especially a ques- 


78 


WORKWAYS FOR 


tionable use of a word. It may be well to sharpen students’ sensitive¬ 
ness to diction—that matter is not discussed here. But it is also well 
to learn how to see big faults. The student who wants to object to 
“the motor room” or to “in the motor room in the effort” should be 
told to calm his perturbed spirit and to attend to the business in hand. 


Comments on the Six Paragraphs 

1. The time order is not seriously wrong or confusing, but students 
can see how much more likely they are to make coherent paragraphs if 
they avoid this writer’s back-tracking in the second and the last sen¬ 
tences. If he had begun with the time of the last sentence, and followed 
this with the time of the second sentence, and then followed with the 
first and third, he would have carried us along much better. 2. Admir¬ 
able because of its time order and its purposeful progress from poverty 
and quandary, through the pages of the magazine, to “the first thing on 
the page.” 3. The first four sentences pile up the deafening noises with 
good effect, but the straight line of this effect is broken off short at 
11 one gets accustomed to all this, ’ ’ and then is shifted to the weak and 
very different topic of “first night’s rest is somewhat impaired by the 
noise which he imagines he hears. ’ ’ 4. The first two sentences follow 

a straight line by offering a pair of opposite thoughts contrasted by 
‘ 1 however. ’ ’ Then the last sentence swings us back to consider the first 
thought. The natural order would be: first thought, second thought, 
consideration of this second thought. 5. A coherent paragraph of 
description made by a professional. 6. A sad hodge-podge of purposes. 
The first two sentences could be coherent, but as they stand they seem 
to be at cross-purposes; for “I am not much of a reader” and “it is a 
long, deep book. ’ ’ This 1 ‘ deep ’ ’ book is said in the third sentence to 
‘ 1 give accounts of trivial events. ’ ’ The fourth sentence tells of Frank¬ 
lin’s experience and advice. Then the fifth sentence goes back to the 
writer’s lack of interest in the book and goes forward to ‘ * did me some 
good. ’ ’ The way in which it did good is explained in the last sentence, 
which also has the duty of wandering back to the early part of the 
paragraph to tell about the contents of the book. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 108 

The world is full of plans. Almost any newspaper gives accounts 
of projects and campaigns and hopeful undertakings. One while the 
press was giving us pictures of the monument erected at one of the 
busiest corners in St. Louis “In memory of child life sacrificed on the 
altar of haste and recklessness: 32 children killed by motor cars this 
year. ’ ’ That was a plan to decrease loss of life. The dedication of the 
monument was a feature of a Safety Week program. Any “safety” 
plan is excellent material for a letter. Inventions—our imaginings of 
what would be a good plan—should be encouraged. If ingenuity is 
shown in some letters, a local paper might be glad to print a couple of 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


79 


the best themes. Is there a plan for relieving congestion in the streets? 
That is a live topic in every city today. Every rural district knows of 
plans to check some insect pest. A little class discussion will show that 
the world seems largely composed of plans nowadays. Everybody has 
a plan to rid the world of war. 


LESSON 15 

It is almost true, as school advice, that every paragraph is likely to 
be better if the writer is thinking about a climax for it. Have you ever 
seen a theme in which a poor effect was caused by too much effort at 
climax in paragraphs? Certainly there could be such a theme, but I 
have never encountered it. 

Weakness at the end, of paragraphs or compositions, is far more 
common than I ever suspected ten years ago. What is more important, 
a teacher’s attack upon this particular weakness— at-the-end —will, indi¬ 
rectly, be a flank movement upon incoherence. If any tolerably con¬ 
scientious student is mindful from the outset of a paragraph that he 
ought not to arrive at weakness, he will probably be conscious of a jar 
when he veers away from straight-ahead progress. Whatever the psy¬ 
chology of the matter is, it proves true in practice that an effort at 
emphasis is an insurance against incoherence. If a writer aims at a 
climax, he is at least kept attentive; and most incoherence is caused by 
inattention. 

The advice on page 111 about “not beginning so entertainingly’’ is 
far from a general truth; a humorous opening is often a capital device. 
What is more, there is no rule of composition that such an opening 
must be lived up to and that the end must be funnier still. All that 
page 111 says is this: “Realize that you are beginning in a striking 
way; realize what you are about as you proceed; ask yourself whether 
it is good architecture to close with the very dregs of the subject— 
the refuse . 1 * 

1. The paragraph is about West Point graduates (for the first two 
lines are merely linking with a previous paragraph). It is very emphatic 
in the first sentence—“the best officers,” and tries to continue the 
emphasis in the second sentence. But no more emphasis appears, for 
we hear of “no easy task,” “they graduate,’’ “they are paid sixty 
dollars each year. ’ ’ The last sentence is the most trivial detail. 

2. After showing that the book is Johnson’s “greatest” and gives 
“splendid accounts” and “was received with eagerness” the para¬ 
graph closes with “the small price paid for it and for his other works.” 

3. The paragraph begins with advertisements that hold the attention 
of the tired business man, but closes weakly and wanderingly with 
“some that interest and some that don’t.” 

4. Well managed for emphasis up to “I was so terribly scared.” The 
last clause of the last sentence is perhaps not seriously weak, but it is 
certainly not a good model. 

5. Good emphasis. Each- sentence speaks of the contrast between 
man’s work and God’s work, and the last one holds our attention to 
“this contrast.” 


80 


WORKWAYS FOR 


6. The first three sentences emphasize the plot, and possibly the 
fourth may be called a discussion of a big element of the plot; but the 
last sentence clearly shifts away to the topic of ‘ 1 the purpose to please. ’ ’ 

LESSON 16 

The gospel of transition between paragraphs is just the same as 
for sentences, though it is more necessary in the case of paragraphs. 
For that reason it may be well to study this Lesson, on the more obvious 
way of building thought-bridges, before taking up the smaller and more 
artistic question of bridges between sentences in Lesson 9. The princi¬ 
ples of making transitions between sentences will be better approached 
in that way and better illustrated. M 

A boy can understand “reader will bump his nose” on page 114 and 
may respond to it; he mil feel only a languid interest in such a gen¬ 
erality as “reader will feel perplexed.” There is a great gulf of 
pedagogy between those two expressions. The word bump is not used 
wantonly or accidentally, but for the purpose of making a printed 
page produce some result in composition. 

I have just had a testimony from a boy who studied Grahame’s 
transitions three years ago; he says that they are still vivid in his mind 
and still warn him not to bump a reader when he passes to a new 
paragraph. Finding this passage was a good fortune, because there 
are few chapters of literature that yield such a combination of story 
interest and flights to different scenes. 

If you can dramatize Grahame’s difficulties, you will help the class. 
Students forget that an author is human and must use all his wits to 
secure his effects. These transitions did not come by a mere flow of 
genius, but by a difficult process of sorting out possibilities—thus: 

Put yourself in Mr. Grahame’s place as he sits at his desk planning. 
In his mind are all the elements of a complicated situation in a family: 
the death of Billy, which looms up as the most prominent fact; the 
sorrow of Martha; the sympathy of the two girls, who wept with her; 
the concern of the other servants; what the father and mother had said 
and done; what the children had for breakfast; how they talked all the 
time about Edward’s letter that had come the night before; how the 
boys quarreled with the girls; how Martha had been brave and cheer¬ 
ful while she served the children’s breakfast, but had run upstairs and 
broken down when Billy’s name was mentioned; how the boy broke his 
shoelace; who told the boy about Billy’s death; how the girls were not 
as sympathetic as they would have been if they had not been so offended 
by Edward’s failing to thank them; how Harold was not told the sad 
news, because he was so young; how and -when Harold had gone out¬ 
doors; why the girls were in the schoolroom when the boys did not have 
to be there; how Harold also was rebuffed by the girls, and how Martha 
played with him at a quarter past nine. These are only a few samples 
of the hundred items that are all spread out on one level in Mr. Gra¬ 
hame’s mind. Which shall he select, and which shall he not mention at 
all? With which one shall he begin? Which shall be second? How shall 
he move straight along from the first to the second and on to the third? 

Mr. Grahame does' not jump us from “shoelace” to “brother was 
dead”; at the beginning of the second paragraph he uses a short sen- 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


Si 


tence that speaks of “the cause’’ of the sobs which are the subject of 
the first paragraph. Thus he carries us across smoothly. The second 
paragraph is about the death of Martha’s brother Billy; and it closes, 
like the first paragraph, with a grimly playful contrast between Martha’s 
grief and my shoelace. The author did not leap from “grief and shoe¬ 
lace ’ ’ to “I wandered off ’ ’; he carries the topic along by referring to 
it as “a poor sort of beginning,’’ and thus we are made to anticipate 
the next step beyond the beginning. He does not leap suddenly from 
“the obstinate way of the girls’’ to Harold outdoors. He rounds out 
his episode of the third paragraph by saying, ‘ 1 Hence it was I received 
my second rebuff.” We are prepared for a third step. 

‘ 1 Somewhat disheartened, ’ ’ begins the fourth paragraph, continu¬ 
ing the mood that we have been in, “I made my way downstairs.” 
Then we are ready for whatever may happen. The boy’s mood becomes 
cheerful; he plays that he is a puma, and 11 rolls Harold over on the 
gravel.” The next topic is “the quarrel.” The author could very 
well have begun with Harold’s exclamation, but chose a more interesting 
way: he abruptly states a general maxim about “things that don’t 
come off, ’ ’ and not until his second sentence does he carry on the pre¬ 
vious topic with “this was one of the things that didn’t come off.” The 
reader has not been sidetracked, but is pleased at this novel way of 
keeping him on the track. 

The paragraphs are from Dies Irae, which originally appeared in 
the Yellow Boole for January, 1896. The next ten paragraphs are in 
Lesson 42. 


Comments on the Exercise 

To discover the central topic of each paragraph in the Exercise and 
to describe it in specific, concrete words is harder than any student 
dreams. If you do not put this difficulty plainly to the class, students 
will suppose the task is simple, and they will derive little benefit from 
it. To name reference words is almost mechanically easy; to say what 
they connect is the hard and valuable part of the task. 

1. The flight to Lycia. 2, “Being so near their, journey’s end”; 
reaching the ruins and carcasses in a wild part of Lycia. 3. “This mis¬ 
chief”; realizing that the Chimsera may be near. 4. “Nothing remark¬ 
able” (note that “as I have already said” is a poor linking device 
for students to employ in their short themes) ; the smoke from the 
nostrils of the Chimsera. 5. “To turn Pegasus about”; descending to 
the cavern’s mouth. 6. “Within the cavern”; the three bodies and the 
three heads in one. 7. “Slumbering as two-thirds of it were”; the 
prey that it was gnawing. 8. “Knew it to be the Chimsera”; escaping 
the Chimsera’s headlong rush. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 120 

An epoch is marked in any student’s life when he first realizes that 
to spout objections hotly or sarcastically will do no good. That is the 
fact of prime importance in undertaking to express our objections. It 
is the key to much of the success in argument. Politeness in attack is 
power. 


82 


WORKWAYS FOR 


LESSON 17 

It is easy to trust too much to a formula like * ‘ straight line’ ’ and to 
expect that every well-made paragraph of literature will show, when 
minutely examined, an undeviating directness. We must keep students 
warned that such is not the case. Parkman, for example, swings a loop 
from the fort to the Indian camp and back again; he makes a time 
loop forward to a later period of Washington’s life and back again. 
His progress is not literally “straight” in every particular. But his 
carefulness always gives a sense of “straightness in purpose”—that is 
the significant fact. He does not take an aimless excursion to the Indian 
camp or a heedless flight to later years; he realizes where he goes, and 
he never allows a reasonably wide-awake reader to feel the slightest 
confusion. 

“It seems to tell itself,” says page 123. Here, as in Lesson 16 and 
always, we do well to bring home the fact that authors are not divinely 
and easily perfect. A professional baseball player makes errors. The 
comparison with baseball is all too trite, and boys may be weary of it; 
but they understand it. They realize—as a. non-player never could— 
the effort and attention, and the possibility of mistake, when a profes¬ 
sional player is in action. If you compare an author with him, you 
will bring the author down to the level of human frailty where his 
example becomes alive. 

One weakness of a recitation on this Lesson may be the mere repeti¬ 
tion of the criticism pointed out by the book. Some of this is useful; 
I should require a bit of it in a written test—for example, “How does 
Parkman keep a straight line in the scene at the ford?” But I should 
try to stir up some original comment, especially some objections that 
the book had made out too strong a case in favor of Parkman. Most 
good is to be expected from first-hand student criticism of Defoe and 
of the student writers in the Second and Third Exercises. 


Comments on the Exercises 

First Exercise. One liberty has been taken with the text—substi¬ 
tuting started for came in the second paragraph, because Defoe did 
not mean i 1 had already arrived, ’ ’ and his use of came would confuse 
students. The paragraph is a striking example of keeping time, place, 
and emphasis progressing together. The time begins “about noon” and 
proceeds by these steps: stood, listened and looked, went higher to look, 
went along the shore to look, returned to the footprint, felt “innumer¬ 
able fluttering thoughts, ’ ’ started home, on the way thither felt the dif¬ 
ferent fears described, reached his castle, fled into it, * ‘ next morning ’ » 
could not remember, slept none that night, and then further progress of 
time is indicated by “the farther I was from the occasion of my 
fright.” In discussing the place it will be well to explain to the 
class that “a straight line” does not mean that a chart of Crusoe’s 
movements would be a straight line, but means that a reader can follow 
Crusoe’s movements easily—can “keep them straight in his mind with- 
put effort.” Show also how the time element, here as in most compo* 



THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


83 


sition, is much more important than the place. The course of move¬ 
ments is this: I was going toward my boat on the beach; from the 
footprint I made a trip to the rising ground and back; I made a trip 
up and down the shore; I came back to the footprint; I ran from there 
straight to my castle and into it. The progress of “more and more 
terrified ’ ’ is thisI was exceedingly surprised; I stood thunderstruck; 
then through the rest of the first paragraph a sympathetic reader must 
feel how the terror is growing as Crusoe runs up and down and forward 

and back; by the beginning of the second paragraph I am “out of 

myself’’; on my way home I am terrified to the last degree, and my 
wild ideas are indescribable; by the time I reached home my mind was 
no longer working, for I have no memory of what I did; after a sleep¬ 
less night my fear continued to increase (in the last paragraph); to 
fancy that the devil himself has stepped on the shore is the extreme 
of terror. 

Second Exercise. In these paragraphs there are numerous minor 
faults which ought not to be discussed in recitation unless there is time 
to spare. Attention should be focused on the one or two ways in 

w'hich each paragraph shows a decided turn from the straight line of 

progress in time or place. In No. 1, for example, the following little 
boggles are not really the kind of errors that the student is told to criti¬ 
cize: the incoherence of “but it was published”; the illogical use of 
“for this was published”; the slight awkwardness of “the Primer it¬ 
self”; the making of a separate sentence for abomination; the somewhat 
jerky and unrelated last tw r o sentences. The one outstanding violation 
of time order is at the beginning of the third sentence: after the Primer 
is all published in the second sentence, w r e are jumped back in time to 
“the reading long before the Primer appeared.” 

The most effective way of showing students how to detect failures to 
keep a straight line may be illustrated by No. 2. Teach them to follow' 
closely from each sentence to the next, thus: ‘ ‘ Real merit is brought out 
by hard work. Work teaches the merit of obedience. It teaches the 
merit of ‘seeing the matter through.’ Then we are jumped suddenly to 
< the boy gets a strong body. ’ ’ ’ From here on the paragraph compares 
a farm with an office. 

No. 3. The last sentence goes back in time. After the servants are 
trained, we learn what they did before they were trained. 

No. 4. In the first two sentences the boys are at the soda-fountain; 
in the third they go there. Sentences 4-7 tell about the cleanness of the 
fun; then the fountain is suddenly likened to the resort of “the loafer 
of the streets.” 

No. 5. The first four sentences emphasize how “this never-ending 
sea of brownish vegetation interests few”; the fifth sentence tells of 
the interesting animals, “the innumerable species of prairie life”; the 
last sentence denies that there is enough of interest to write about. If 
the fifth sentence had been put first, as an admission that the prairie 
is interesting in one way, and if then there had been a transition to 
“otherwise the prairie is utterly uninteresting,” the paragraph could 
have been unified. The strange back-and-forth turning of the thought is 
shown by the fact that the writer began his next paragraph with “one 
of the most interesting stretches. ” It is hard to believe, but it is exactly 


84 


WORKWAYS FOR 


true, that an able boy, who did well in entrance examinations for college, 
wrote the sentences just as they stand. . 

No. 6. After telling us that Cooper failed in his setting because lie 
knew nothing of England the paragraph says that “ most people thought 
the book was written by an Englishman. ’ ’ This apparent contradic¬ 
tion could have been explained and reconciled in a unified paragraph 
(Cooper, in spite of his ignorance, followed his models of English nov¬ 
els so skilfully), but this paragraph makes no effort to reconcile and 
unify. 

Third Exercise. Comments on Theme 1. After the first para¬ 
graph has told about where signs are placed in cars, the second jumps 
(by a misleading remark about “great business”) to “changing the 
advertisements at night. ’ ’ After we hear about the placing of 
the advertisements, we are told in the third paragraph about making 
them. 

Theme 2. It can be argued that the beginning of the second para¬ 
graph is out of an orderly arrangement because it defines a punt after 
we have decided to build one—and the point is a good one to note. Yet 
it is doubtful whether we ought to quarrel with this writer’s order, 
though we must object to the jerky way of bringing in topics—what a 
punt is, where punts are seen, what the plans called for. The first real 
violation of a straight line is at the beginning of the third paragraph: 
after “two weeks later we always stuck to the seat” the time reverts 
to “a few days for drying the tar.” The theme has many faults of 
proportion and emphasis—e. g., the first third is merely deciding to 
build, and the second third gives no real account of the building. But 
the straight line is broken only once. 

Theme 3. In the first paragraph we cannot follow the thought from 
“guarding health is not easy” to “must admit that the systems are 
very advanced ” to “ danger because millions of people are growing. ’ ’ 
The second paragraph begins abruptly with the Board of Health, but is 
fairly orderly. The disorder in paragraphs 2 and 3 comes from men¬ 
tioning the departments in this order: the different departments, refuse, 
milk, the different departments, milk and water, these two, water, milk 
(i. e., farmers and health-officers). We have to struggle to find out 
that the fourth paragraph is about carelessness with garbage at the 
homes. At the beginning of the last paragraph we are jumped from 
“polluting the air” to “keep the city clean.” The rest of the 
paragraph is fairly coherent on “keep the parks clean” until the last 
seven words, which swing us off to “cost.” 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGES 131-132 

Few weaknesses of human nature are more common or more pitiful 
than our eager grasping at an offer of great benefits for a petty price. 
It is appalling to read the testimonials from men of high position and 
great ability who affirm that they have received most precious improve¬ 
ment of their intellects by following some printed directions for “im¬ 
proving their power of speech. ’ ’ There must be hundreds of thousands 
of hopeful gulls who pay money for books that are guaranteed to make 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


85 


people compelling and winsome conversationalists. To expose such 
fraud in a set of themes will teach more than composition. 

I have always wondered why students are not taught to realize the 
amount of money that a community spends upon them for education. 
Many a town has had to raise its tax rate to four per cent because of 
the mounting costs of high schools. There is now, as there never was 
before 1910, serious question of the wisdom of lavishing such funds on 
students who treat the gift with indifference and do not recognize any 
obligation to respond by hard and faithful work. The subject is one 
to rouse emotion and to cause a searching of hearts. 


LESSON 18 

The definition of a plot will not satisfy a demand for academic 
completeness; it is not adequate for a treatise on the short story. All 
I claim for it is that the exceptions have never caused trouble in my 
classes and that the simple formula of “making people care” directs 
attention to the effort which counts most toward success in school com¬ 
position. We cannot “make readers care” unless we show motives at 
the outset, unless we do all we can to make characters alive, unless we 
lead up to a crisis, and unless we arrange a climax. The summary on 
page 135 is a concentrated extract from many years of effort to find 
what advice acts most directly on school authors. 

It will increase the interest of a class if you explain that the three 
stories referred to in the Exercise were written in the ordinary course 
of school routine, by boys who sat at ordinary desks, writing for an 
ordinary teacher who had no thought of ever embalming what they did 
in a textbook. The writers of the three stories in Lesson 43 were 
called, respectively, Toto, Harry, and Brownie; they went to college at 
Harvard, Antioch, and the University of California. 


Comments on the Exercises 

First Exercise. (1) The discussion of “ In what character are we 
most interested?” ought not to degenerate into idle talk of how we 
should feel about a mother or a father or a child who faced starva¬ 
tion in a cabin. The discussion should center on “What has the author 
done to make us interested?” It is a discussion of composition, not of 
our imaginings. The writer has done nothing to arouse our sympathies 
for one character or against another; man and wife agree on the des¬ 
perateness of the undertaking, and there is no stress or conflict between 
them. Ask if students can name any good short story in which there is 
no conflict between characters; then they will see that “A Journey 
Almost Taken” has hardly any plot, but is merely a descriptive sketch 
of a perilous situation. If the husband were determined that the wife 
should not go, if there were some cross-purpose, some different contriv- 
ings for saving the children’s lives—then a plot could be developed. 
The writer did not invent such a basis of plot. (2) The opening situa- 


86 


WORKWAYS FOR 


tion is this: a family marooned in a forest during winter, the father 
confined to his bed, the mother not strong enough to make the fifty-mile 
snowshoe trip to the settlement, the supply of food very low, the help¬ 
less, hungry children. (3) If a student argues that there is a “change 
of situation ’ ’ when the resolution is made that Hettie shall try to go to 
the settlement, he is right, in a way. But the great turn of events is 
in the last paragraph—“was heard a knock.” (4) At the close the 
family 1 ‘ is saved from starvation. ’ ’ A good discussion may be had 
on “Should the writer carry on his narrative to tell of the hungry 
people eating, or is it better to stop short of that?” (5) We are inter¬ 
ested in this change of situation because the family is rescued from 
death—the dullest student knows that. But are we thinking more of the 
children safe at home or of the wife who might have been on the long 
trail? Most of our interest depends on using our own imagination, as 
if we were reading a matter-of-fact account in a newspaper. The 
writer has not invented any surprise, has not solved any complication. 

Second Exercise. The gist of the answers for the other two stories 
of Lesson 43 is as follows: 

“Sixty Blocks and Thirty Dollars.” 1. There is only one character 
in whom to be interested. 2. A boy is setting out to have a grand time 
by squandering thirty dollars for his own amusement. 3. At the box 
office, when the boy discovers that he has no money. 4. A boy who has 
recovered his lost money is spending money for the amusement of the 
family. 5. Because we have followed a penniless boy oh a long trip 
home, who expects nothing but chagrin when he arrives there. 

“A Four-footed Blessing.” 1. There is no reason, unless our imag¬ 
ination happens to work in some way hard to analyze, for being more 
interested in one character than in the other. Say that you are going 
to ask for a show of hands; ask each student to make up his mind before 
the question is put; give Fuller a place on the ballot. 2. A poor couple 
—the husband consumptive—are spending all the little money they have 
to restore the husband’s health. 3. The abrupt change of topic at the 
beginning of paragraph 4, where Fuller is first mentioned, could be 
called the change of situation, because the agent of the change is there 
set in operation; though Fuller does not enter the bounds of the story 
till paragraph 5. 4. The Lyonses have $5000 for the expenses of the 
sanitarium—where, presumably, Jasper’s health can be restored. 5. Be¬ 
cause we have become acquainted with two people in a situation that 
rouses our sympathies; because the money they have won probably 
means escape from death and widowhood. 


LESSON 19 

Why is the formula of “the four w’s” (when, where, why, and 
who) so generally accepted as valid? I could never find that it was 
helpful. It seems, in my experience, to oblige a student to give, me¬ 
chanically and with dreary artificiality, a census of the time, place, 
situation, and people who are to be brought into action. How many 
5000-word stories, where there is plenty of room, are built in that way? 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


87 


What reader wants a census? We wish to become acquainted with peo¬ 
ple, to feel their emotions, and to see how the hero rises out of distress. 

If your analysis of story-writing differs from mine, if you have 
learned a way of making the four w’s produce well-motived plots, fit 
Lesson 19 to your method by telling the class that you think the book 
underestimates the four w ’s; tell them that 11 the time always means a 
great deal to an audience” (if you can prove it) and that “some de¬ 
scription of the place should always be given at the outset” (if that is 
true of your experience of the best high-school stories). 

Comments on the Exercise 

Section I. There are only a few faint traces of character-drawing. 
Hettie is certainly a determined person; Hank is ready with his re¬ 
volver. The boy with thirty dollars seems a bit absent-minded and a 
good deal of a spendthrift and generous; also he must be excitable, for 
he feels “ ultimate embarrassment” and gives “a wild shriek of joy.” 
There is a distinct effort in the second paragraph of “A Four-footed 
Blessing” to tell of the 11 dispositions ” of the pair: Jasper has “ opti¬ 
mism and a kindly nature”; he “smiles at the plucky mocking-bird,” 
and he “tries to calm his wife.” Mary “differs in many ways,” 
especially in being “very pessimistic”; and in paragraph 6 she is 
‘ 1 hysterical. ’ ’ 

Section II. 1. The wunter season is important in the situation 
for the first story. Christmas-time is an important part of the setting 
for the second. The “March” of the third has nothing to do with 
any element of our interest in the plot. 

Section III. The remoteness of the cabin in the forest is the most 
important part of the setting of the first story, because the journey 
for food might have been almost as difficult after the snow had melted. 
Any big city would have answered as well as New York for the place 
in which to spend thirty dollars, and any suburb would have furnished 
the movies to which the family went. Place is important in the story 
of the consumptive, because he had gone to California for the sake of 
the climate; yet Colorado or Arizona would have done as well. 


IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES, PAGE 140 

The Britannica article “Mountaineering” tells us that “systematic 
mountaineering, as a sport, is usually dated from Sir Alfred Wills’s 
ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854. ’ ’ The top of Mont Blanc was never 
reached till 1786, and before 1700 it would appear that climbing a moun¬ 
tain was only the very unusual effort of some peculiarly daring scien¬ 
tist. Such facts, while not furnishing theme material for a class in 
high school, will indicate that the picture might lead an imaginative 
mind anywhere. 

Whatever kind of subject is undertaken, the requirement for treat¬ 
ing it cannot vary: “to have one purpose, to plan for one effect.” 


88 


WORKWAYS FOR 


ADDITION TO LESSON 19 

This is the first of four 11 Additions ’ ’ to Lessons. They are store¬ 
rooms of topics and of ways of finding topics. Regard them as material 
which may be needed some time to supplement theme work, but which is 
on no account to be taken as regular lessons unless a class is showing 
marked ability and needs to have its powers stretched. The other 
‘‘ Additions ’’ follow Lessons 24, 25, and 27. 

I add here a few examples of newspaper reports which would furnish 
material for stories, or for other types of theme. No diligence is 
required to gather dozens of such items, presumably true, which are 
more remarkable than fiction would dare to be. 

Old-time robbers sat down with members of the Clergy 
Club at a luncheon at the Hotel Astor yesterday. The 
luncheon quickly developed into a love-feast and experience 
meeting at which the ecclesiastical hosts were addressed fre¬ 
quently as “you fellows, ” and were told how they could 
help stop the “crime wave.” 

Milton and Holden L’Ecluse, 10 and 14 year old sons 
of Milton L’Ecluse, were digging in the sand in front of 
the L’Ecluse estate here yesterday when they came upon an 
old tin can. With childish curiosity they pulled it from its 
hiding place and to their amazement found it filled with 
precious stones and jewelry. Running into the house, they 
confronted their mother with the treasures, which later were 
found to be worth $10,000. 

The mother recalled that on Sept. 7 thieves had entered 
the rooms of Henry C. Willcox, Vice President of the Amer¬ 
ican ... 

( * Uncle Robert, ’ ’ the year-round Santa Claus to the poor 
and unfortunate, will be the host at a “party” at Welfare 
Island Sunday, Dec. 16, when he will entertain the 3,200 
inmates of the City Home and distribute presents among 
them. There will be a program by the Police Glee Club and 
the “Uncle Robert Minstrel Troupe” of Public School 109, 
composed of boys from 9 to 11 years old. “Uncle Robert” 
will pass out pipes and tobacco and checkerboards to the 
men and handkerchiefs and knick-knacks to the women. 

This will be the first of a series of pre-Christmas parties 
to be given various public institutions throughout the city 
by “Uncle Robert,” who modestly hides his identity. ) 

Little Jimmy Glass was returned last evening to his 
home in Jersey City—dead. The famous search which be¬ 
gan nine years ago in a remote village in Pike County, 

Pa., and the trails of which had traversed 48,000 miles into 
many lands, terminated yesterday where it began, in 
Greeley, Pa., only a mile and a half from where the four- 
year-old boy last was seen alive. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


89 


While walking along Rockaway Beach yesterday morn¬ 
ing Frank Pick, who lives at the resort, noticed a green 
bottle which had been washed in by the waves. The top 
of the bottle was sealed and inside was a piece of white 
paper. Pick broke the neck and read the following mes¬ 
sage on the paper: 

1 ‘ This bottle was cast into the sea at Kingstown in the 
County of Dublin, Ireland, on the 4th day of December, 
1882, by Elizabeth Kinch, Pave Lane, Kingstown, age 18 
years. Hope some nice boy finds and returns it to me. ’ ’ 

Although the probabilities were that Miss Kinch found 
a ‘ ‘ nice boy ’ ’ long since, Pick said he would inform the 
sixty-year-old woman that the bottle had ended its journey. 

Sixteen-year-old Norma Niblock, of Toronto, Ont., had 
a great deal to be thankful for when she awakened in the 
regal beauty suite of the Waldorf Astoria yesterday. 

To begin with she had had a perfectly gorgeous week 
in New York and Washington with special trains, private 
automobiles, theaters, parties an’ everything. 

In the second place the memory was still poignantly 
fresh of being adjudged the “most beautiful girl in Amer¬ 
ica, ” and being so crowned before an admiring crowd of 
thousands by no less a heart crusher than Rodolph Valen¬ 
tino. 


“ There’s a woman down here, judge, that has a Thanks¬ 
giving dinner to cook .... 31 people coming to her 
house .... accidental felonious assault as I see it ... . 
yes, I ’ll guarantee her presence in court .... thanks 
judge. ’ ’ 


LESSON 20 

The previous experience of the class has probably been that “telling 
a story” is an exercise in speaking distinctly, with assurance, without 
much and or so. Perhaps some in your class cannot do much more than 
that now. Don’t expect much or try to set the gage of achievement 
suddenly up to several notches above what the class can reach. But set 
it, if possible, a little higher than it has ever been before. Pull stu¬ 
dents up as far as you can toward the point where an oral theme is 
practice in delivering a constructed composition, that is built by the 
careful architecture of written work. 


LESSON 21 

There has been of late years a very wholesome protest _ against the 
“four forms of discourse”—narration, description, exposition, and ar¬ 
gument. I have been among the protesters, and I am sure that much 


90 


WORKWAYS FOR 


poor teaching has been done on the basis of this classification. Pro¬ 
fessional writers are not able to tell the difference between description 
and exposition or between stories and narratives. An ordinary essay 
or editorial is not a “type of discourse,” but reasons by the use of 
narration or description or exposition, or by a blend of all of them. 
It follows, therefore, that a teacher who thinks the school types are 
realities teaches fanciful unrealities. 

But these facts do not prove anything about a school method of 
teaching composition. Just as a school may find it wise policy to set 
up temporary artificial standards of sentences and paragraphs, in order 
to teach with economy and emphasis, so it may be wise economy to use 
the artificial “types” in our teaching. All depends upon what ex¬ 
perience shows. My own experience is that small harm is done by using 
the types and that a great deal of good is insured. The gain is not 
a knowledge of types, for that is mental lumber; it is a knowledge that 
every composition should be animated by some one purpose. Everybody 
concedes that purpose is essential. 

If, for one example, an untrained boy is to write a theme about a 
ghost, his thoughts scatter; he may describe, in the compass of one 
theme, a ghost that he once saw at a seance, give a narrative of what 
happened before and after the seance, argue that a belief in spirits is 
sensible, and conclude with a paragraph that is a climax of a story 
about a lost bracelet pointed out by a spirit. If this student had been 
made aware of the 1 * types ’ ’ of composition, he would not have been 
impeded by the knowledge, would not have felt constrained to write 
‘ ‘ description ’ ’ or “ argument. ’ ’ He would have asked himself at the 
outset, “What am I about? What do I want to do? Do I want to 
invent some fiction? Shall I tell people clearly just what happened? 
Shall I show these scoffers that spiritualism is sensible? What is to 
be my one purpose?” He knows how to direct himself in composition. 
If teaching the four types secures that result it seems to me a wise 
method. 

If the method is used unwisely, so that it makes a student suppose 
he must always manufacture one of the types, then it is silly: If it is 
supposed to embody an academic truth about literature, it is silly. But 
if the method is a useful half-truth that is helpful in pedagogy, it is 
admirable. It should be explained to students as a mere kind of train¬ 
ing which, like practicing scales on a piano, is a way of acquiring 
facility. The types are not the stuff of our teaching; what we secure 
is the. power to decide on a course of action and to follow it with an 
eye single to that one purpose. The teacher’s emphasis should be, as 
it is on page 148, “We do not need to bother our heads with theoretical 
differences, but w r e should always be intent on having one definite pur¬ 
pose. ” 

I have not liked to seem radical by teaching “stories” as prac¬ 
tically a fifth type of composition, but a piece of fiction containing a 
plot is so different from a narrative of fact that I find the distinction 
clarifying. On page 148 I have satisfied the academic tradition by 
saying that a story is a subdivision of narration, but in practice I never 
speak of classification; I' talk about the purpose in telling of facts as 
they happened, the purpose of surprising a reader with a turn of plot. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


91 


The longer I observe the effects of theme-making, the more I grow 
afraid of mere narrative. It is almost an invitation to be formless and 
without purpose. I insist on some obvious purpose in narrative, a plan of 
coming, story-like, to some climax. Much harm can be done by allow¬ 
ing a student to ramble on and on with a sequence of events; such 
composition is weak, and it encourages weakness. See page 149. For 
an illustration of the way types should be minimized see page 162, where 
the Fairfax narrative is called a description. 

Question 3 of the Exercise is the most important one, because it 
minimizes the emphasis on type and exalts the purpose. Question 4 
should enforce Lesson 15, on emphasis in the paragraph. See “End 
of themes’ ’ in the Index. 


Comments on the Selections 

1. The time order of the three selections. (1) Tom and the captain 
try to clear the coil of rope; then I try; but I am caught by the wrist; 
I am drawn overboard; I am dragged down into the depths; I go on 
down, down. (2) First I see the afflictions of the man; then a doctor is 
sent for; then I describe, in order of time, what the doctor did (took 
the man to an outroom, laid him on a bench, bound him, made a smoke 
under his mouth, kept him there) ; after the smoking there is no re¬ 
sult; when no result appears, the three characters are abashed, af¬ 
flicted, and wondering. (3) First there is a description of how Lord 
Fairfax looks now; then the second sentence carefully takes us back 
to his youth by saying “However ungainly his present appearance’’ and 
by using the pluperfect “had figured.” From here on the time order 
is strictly followed, unless the London days were after Oxford: “after¬ 
wards” he had a commission in the Blues, wrote for the Spectator; 
“at the height of his career” he fell in love; the wedding was ar¬ 
ranged for; she broke the engagement; “from that time” he avoided 
the sex; he “ ultimately ’ ’ abandoned the gay world; he buried himself 
in America. 

2. Place order in the three selections. (1) The scene is in the boat, 
through which the coil of rope is whipping swiftly; then it is “over¬ 
board”; then deep in the water. (2) The man is first in one room, 
and then is taken to “an outroom.” (3) First comes Fairfax’s life 
in England, then in America. 

3. The purpose of the first is to describe the thoughts of eternity 
while there was a stream of fire whizzing past my eyes and a roaring 
as of thunder in my ears. (If the student is required to use some of 
the terms used by the author, he is usually better taught, because he 
has to observe just what the author says.) The purpose of the second 
selection is to show how this effort to smoke out the devil impressed 
me, made me wonder. The purpose of the third selection is to show 
how it happened that such a man as Lord Fairfax lived in such a place 
as the Colonies. 

4. “Meeting my God” is the most impressive of the thoughts about 
the future life and shows what kind of thoughts he had about eternity 
and sin. “Wondering and fearing” shows the result of the whole 


92 


WORKWAYS FOR 


effort to smoke out the devil. “Buried in the wilds of America ’* im¬ 
presses on us the strangeness of the fact that such a man should live 
in America—that is, Irving wanted to show how remarkable it was that 
the young Washington should have had contact with an English aris¬ 
tocrat of the gay world. 


LESSON 22 

Some teachers make a fetish of outlines. How far wrong we may 
be in expecting too much of outlines is evident from a revelation that 
was once made to me when I questioned a number of boys about their 
methods. Every one of them had been required for two years to fur¬ 
nish an outline of every theme; their ability to write orderly themes 
was high; I was a devotee of outlines as a wonder-working system. 
One day a good writer smilingly confessed to me that he always made 
his outline after he had completed the theme. When I had somewhat 
recovered from the shock he gave me, I asked another boy, and another, 
and another. Yes, most of them considered outlines as a bothersome 
school requirement, something to be written out and affixed to a com¬ 
position after the construction was complete. Only a few boys faith¬ 
fully tried to previse their full plan and follow out the program of out¬ 
lining that is universally recommended in textbooks. All the best 
writers were a unit in turning the program upside down. 

What would you do if confronted -with such a revelation? Would 
you exhort successful theme-writers to mend their ways and be orthodox? 
I am not so devout as that. I am dreadfully afraid of running counter 
to facts. I told the boys that I was learning something and that pro¬ 
ducing satisfactory composition was, after all, their affair. If their 
results were excellent, who shall say that the venerable faith in pre¬ 
liminary outlines is true? 

In my own case there was another strong reason for being cautious 
in the face of facts: I have seldom found a preliminary outline of any 
use in my own composition. If, as happens once in a great while, I 
have several dozen items to classify and place in a series of paragraphs, 
I have to group them in advance, because I cannot carry them all in 
mind. But this is no more than a mechanical assortment of data; it 
is not a matter of composition. For ordinary marshaling of thoughts 
through a series of paragraphs I have not the prophetic vision to fore¬ 
see what the whole structure is to be. When my main purpose is 
clearly defined and an objective chosen and a start-off made, I never can 
tell what the steps are to be. New thoughts and illustrations, which 
could not be summoned to a cold imagination, come flocking to the 
brain that is warmed in action; a new kind of emphasis or a better tone 
develops subconsciously; the design that I had dimly anticipated turns 
itself other-end-to. The power of “prevision” is one that I covet, but 
it is too high, too wonderful for me. I am unable to stir up the pos¬ 
sibilities when I am at a distance from them; I cannot see what they 
are until I have taken off my coat and plunged into them. 

Still I do not consider outlines less necessary than I used to think 
them. A teacher may have given to himself the wrong reason for a 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


93 


faith, but may find that some other reason is the actual basis. Reasons 
count for little, except as they enable us to work more intelligently. 
What counts is the fact of observation that, somehow or other, outlines 
are a force which makes for improvement. So far as I can analyze the 
power of outlines, it is this: Outlines are a concrete way of advertising 
the necessity of structure; they are a constant reminder that architec¬ 
ture is demanded in composition and that every good theme can be 
outlined. That, I suppose, is the virtue of nutlines. 

So it may be that the stressing of “knows in advance,” at the bot¬ 
tom of page 152, is an overstatement. Professionals do not always see 
a whole course in advance. But they do see what they are headed for 
and about how far away it is, and they know that they must advance 
to the goal in a straight line; the advice to students represents the 
major truth that is useful to them. 

Examples of “absurdly long outlines,” like that on page 153, have 
been seriously printed in textbooks. To me they seem like rhetorical 
nightmares. If you have found them actually useful in teaching para¬ 
graph structure, advise the class that the outline of the whole para¬ 
graph is not absurd, but that some outline could conceivably be long 
enough to be laughable. 

The outline at the bottom of page 154 is numbered in an unusual 
way: the subtitles indicating paragraphs are seriatim. I think this 
would be a good innovation, but it is a novelty, and I have not sug¬ 
gested it elsewhere. 

I do not recall any outline in which subheads for divisions of a para¬ 
graph were helpful, though I can conceive such a case. I make the 
statement in deference to the opinions of many teachers. My own fear 
of subheadings within a paragraph is that they will distract the stu¬ 
dent from his one paragraph topic. 

Comments on the Exercise 

The comment on this Lesson has been largely on how mature or able 
minds work and about topics that are somewhat imaginative. There is 
a different sort of theme—the longer essay that arranges information. 
Outlines for these are more obviously essential. See the comment on 

Lesson 26. T , 

Outline of “Mosquitos” in Lesson 24. It is better tactics to show 
that all the items of the second paragraph reinforce the one topic of 
“overcoming obstacles” than it is to chart each kind of obstacle as a 
separate numbered subhead, for the latter method will not leave with 
the student the notion of paragraph unity. It is well to show that 
“themselves” in the last sentence of the third paragraph does not 
interfere with the general topic of “beasts.” The topics are: (1) 
The clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitos in the north, from July tenth to 
August tenth. (2) How they overcome every obstacle to get at their 
human victims—smoke, mosquito-bars, veils, and pologs. (3) How they 
make some places uninhabitable for even the beasts. 

Outline of “Electrons.” Emphasize that the first sentence is carry¬ 
ing a reader over from a previous paragraph, that the topic is an- 


94 


WORKWAYS FOR 


nounced in the second sentence, and that from there on all our atten¬ 
tion is centered on 11 how fast they travel. ’ ’ The second paragraph ends 
with “ enormous velocity,” but that is only a descriptive phrase to re¬ 
call the previous paragraph; the business of the second paragraph is to 
say that “glowing bodies bombard everything in their neighborhood.” 

Outline of “How salmon live and die’’: 1. Romance of the strug¬ 
gle to live. 2. Feeding and growth in the ocean. 3. Indomitable en¬ 
ergy of the journey up stream. 4. Eggs laid at the spawning grounds. 
5. Weak and disfigured, the old salmon die. 6. The long journey of the 
fry to the ocean—and return. 

Outline of “My section is best’’: 1. Conceding the ugliness. 2. A 

stranger can’t see the beauty. 3. Though ugly, the section is best. 4. 
The June laurel is beauty. 5. The charm of the green forest in mid¬ 
summer. 6. The charm of the autumn foliage and haze. 7. The charm 
of the winter snow. 8. Beauty at all times. 9. Even if beauty does 
not make a place best, it is best because of the love of home. (Logic 
is thrown to the winds here; the paragraph deserts the whole logic of 
the theme.) 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 156 

On page 195 I have tried to picture, at some length and emphatically, 
.the futility of “just talking a while.” 

The advice most needed for a successful treatment of “I think you 
ought to” is to be sure of a polite tone and a deferential approach. 
Making an attack upon the person who “ought” to is worse than bad 
manners; it is the sure way to antagonize him and confirm him in his 
wrong course. A good example of skill and tact in opening an “ought 
to” plea is this beginning of a letter that Charles Kingsley wrote to a 
boy who was wilfully choosing wrong studies. Kingsley was an old and 
beloved friend of the boy’s family and was respected by the boy; he 
could well have taken a firm tone. But he did infinitely better. 

My dear Kennion: 

It is with reluctance that I write on the subject of 
your studies; as, in the first place, I have no right to give 
an opinion; and, in the next, I quite feel the truth of what 
you say in your letter to your mother—that none can de¬ 
cide for you a question with all the bearings of which none 
but yourself can be acquainted. She is extremely anxious, 
however, that you should decide rightly, and has written to 
me to ask what I think. So I am sure you will not think 
that I am intruding advice. 


LESSON 23 

I am a great believer in “poking fun at names.” We all find it 
easy to talk volubly about names, and to forget the question in the last 
line of page 159—“Do you know coherence when you see it?” Isn’t 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


95 


it - true that we have all been relying on a smooth recitation about the 
virtue of coherence and not worrying enough about recognizing inco¬ 
herence when it stalks into our composition? No trait of the boy mind 
is more provocative of sarcasm than its fondness for reciting what the 
book says about emphasis and its indifference to the unemphatic close 
of its own theme. And why should we limit that remark to the poor 
boys? They are much like the rest of us. Put no faith in the rehearsal 
of definitions; depend only on the ability to tell the difference in any 
given theme between unity and lack of unity. 

The matter of proportion, which is more advanced and subtle than 
the other three qualities, is treated at length in Lesson 48. 

Comments on the Exercises 

Exercise 1. The theme, as a whole, lacks unity because it tells too 
much about the sun and earth in the second paragraph and devotes 
nearly the whole last paragraph to the appearance of the earth. 

Exercise 2. The first paragraph is incoherent because it tells of our 
lightness, of volcanos, of the contrast of shadows and light. Erom 
“brightness and inky-black” of the first paragraph we jump to “three 
stages of development, ’ ’ and from the 1 ‘ difference in size ’ ’ of the 
second paragraph we jump to “one of the weirdest spectacles.” 

Exercise 3. The first sentence destroys emphasis because it an¬ 
nounces a topic and then withdraws it. In the second paragraph our 
attention is drawn away from the moon to the size and heat of the 
sun. The last paragraph directs our attention to how the earth would 
look from a distance. ‘ 1 Till some other trip ” is a typical example of 
spoiling the close of a theme by a meaningless reference to some other 
or some unreal subject. 

Exercise 4. The first third of the theme is devoted to gravity and 
lack of atmosphere; the middle third is a comparison of the moon with 
the sun and the earth; the last third tells how the earth looks from 
the moon. 


^ LESSON 24 

The strongest reason against the teaching of the types of discourse 
has been the injudicious treatment of description. Description has been 
idolized as the art of creating a picture of still life. Such an art can 
be found in certain passages of literature—for example, in novels to 
show readers a setting. But as a school exercise it has been dubious, 
and has often resulted in dead assemblings of words about “my home” 
or “a moonlight scene.” There have been beautiful exceptions. I 
recall a three-hundred-word theme that a California boy once wrote 
for me in which he described a sunrise in the coast mountains, a theme 
that was an honest expression of the beauty and wonder he felt during 
an hour of lifting fog and coming sun. Yet it is a general truth that 
much description in our schools has been a false kind of effort. 

Even in the case of the sunrise theme there was a time element; 


96 


WORKWAYS FOR 


there was a narrative of the movement of the fog. This narrative effect 
is difficult to secure, because the ordinary student will insensibly con¬ 
vert his theme into pure narrative, and so follow a purpose that he did 
not intend. 

The purpose that I have found most effective in a descriptive under¬ 
taking is to show the life and movement of some one spot at some one 
minute. Limiting the time and place seems to steer a student toward 
the best effect. Urging him to tell about life, movement, and varied 
elements of the one moment guides him well. An illustration is a 
topic that was a favorite with me for several years: 11 The schoolroom 

door at 7:29.” This was an animated scene of an assembly before 
breakfast in a boarding-school, for taking attendance. Boys came in 
slowly and sparsely from 7:25 to 7:28; then came the limit of our 
picture: boys rushed for the door; boys stood just outside, adjusting 
ties; a teacher was watching for offenders who passed the threshold in 
disorderly dress; ten seconds before the marking-bell was to ring wild 
rushers came with thanksgiving; when the bell rang, some poor fellow 
had a foot on the threshold, but was ruled late. All this made one 
limited scene, of very brief duration, with endless features of human 
interest. Many a boy, amused at the chances here offered and aware 
that he must ‘ 1 stay within the minute, ’ ’ learned a heap about descrip¬ 
tion by the building of one theme. 

The usefulness of description in real life is to convey information 
about “how things are,” “what the condition is.” No true explana¬ 
tion can be made except by way of description. If Burke had not 
described conditions in the colonies, he would not have made much of 
an argument. It often happens that the most effective part of a skil¬ 
ful plea in trial is an emotional description; read to the class Webster’s 
description of the assassination of Captain White, if you are not 
afraid of giving them hysterics. 

The “story effect” must be urged with caution; it is an excellent 
servant in description, but is likely to become the master. For an il¬ 
lustration of how it misleads in exposition see 1 * The Unfortunate 
Lemonade Stand,” page 177. 


Comments on the Exercise 
Section I 

1. In the first paragraph of “Mosquitos” we begin with “the 
tenth of July,” then read “in three or four days,” and then read 
“until the tenth of August.” (In the third paragraph “the month of 
July” is not back-tracking in time, but is merely a handy way of in¬ 
dicating the period from July 10 to August 10.) In “Electrons” there 
is first an indication that “we have now reached this conclusion and 
now have a curiosity”; in the last paragraph we “see, then,” after 
the speed has been shown. 

2. “As far north as Kolyma,” near the end of the first selection, 
is a clear indication of, going farthest north for a climax. In the second 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


97 


selection we are first inside of the flame, seeing the speed of electrons; 
then we are outside, seeing how the electrons bombard objects beyond 
the flame. 

3. In the sketch of Fairfax we first hear of his younger days in 
London and Oxford, then the matter that is most important in his 
social career, a commission in the Blues; then he has access to the best 
society, and we hear of “at the height of his career.” After this 
comes w r hat is by far the most important item in his life, the change 
in character and conduct which sent him to exile in America. 

4. In the account of the possessed man one sentence describes the 
affliction; four sentences narrate the effort to remove the devil; one 
sentence tells of the effects produced on three minds. There is a de¬ 
cided story effect, because we are interested in the afflicted man and in 
the “doctor”; we sympathize and are curious about the result—we 
care. Query: Do students sympathize with the doctor, or do they think 
he is a quack who ought not to succeed? He was not a quack by seven¬ 
teenth-century standards. 


Section II 

Ask the class whether they can make out whereabouts on the tongue 
of land the cabin stood. First we sweep along the peninsula to the 
point, then build a dock close to the cabin (wherever that is), then 
tell of the roughness on the lake and the accident while we were build¬ 
ing, then (or can w r e prove that this was later?) cut a trail (where 
was this? across the base of the peninsula?); we speak of the trip by 
water around the point, and then clear the ground near the cabin. 
Perhaps the climax is not so bad; making the clearing as neat as pos¬ 
sible is a significant close. But it is a minor item, and rather out of 
keeping with all the strenuous projects of making a cabin and trail 
and dock. 


ADDITION TO LESSON 24, PAGE 168 

The Addition is merely supplementary material that may come in 
handy some time. For an explanation of its purpose and use see the 
comment on the Addition to Lesson 19. The material in the Additions 
is really of the nature of the Lessons in the Second Division—that is, 
it supplements and extends the more elementary teaching of the regular 
lessons. 


A PROFESSOR OF RADIO, PAGE 172 

I know of no reason for doubting the truth of the legend provided 
by the firm that sold the photograph. It seems to me a capital example 
of the stimulating idea that most of us can profess some small field of 
knowledge if we have a little industry and ambition. 


98 


WORKWAYS FOR 


LESSON 25 

Our chief fault in teaching school exposition has been that we have 
depended too much on a mere listing of the steps in a process, a mere 
setting down of a series of matter-of-fact descriptions. Such a theme 
explains little,.and it is not infused with a good purpose; it is not likely 
to be a unified structure. “Explaining the nature of” is a different 
matter—more entertaining, more difficult, more useful, a better prepara¬ 
tion for the demands of real life. 

The second paragraph of the Lesson well shows the difference between 
teaching types and teaching purpose. Who cares whether the para¬ 
graph about the merino sheep is description or exposition? It is either 
one you choose to call it. But what is its purpose? It tries to explain 
why this kind of sheep is so valuable. The “story” of salmon is an 
excellent narrative; its purpose is to show the nature of the life of this 
kind of fish. Some day it is going to occur to the world of scholarship 
that “taking pains to bring out the lively interest” (page 176) is a 
necessity in exposition. At present it is regarded as rather bad form 
by scientists and researchers. 

A teacher catches his breath as he imagines what would take place 
in the mind of any student who entered into the spirit of the Exercise 
by trying to “solve his teaching problems.” Many a student can and 
will do this; many cannot do it very well. We must not expect too 
much and must be prepared for disappointment; but we may hope that 
some of the better minds in the class will catch sight of new possibilities 
in their composition work. 

Is “I thought you said” prevalent in your school? If it is not, 
you are so lucky that you can discard question 8. If it is a common¬ 
place, drive home the lesson. A class studies better whenever it sees 
that a book has hit at a well-known localism. 


Comments on the Exercise 

1. The first six paragraphs of dialog have very little to do with 
explaining a business enterprise, though they do give us the setting in 
lively fashion; and the dinner-bell interruption is certainly not of any 
use. Why did the boys not foresee that the shade of the tree would 
move and that there would be no customers passing their stand? This 
innocent short-sightedness makes the theme sound as if the enterprise 
was not a business at all. It is a narrative of ‘ ‘ what we did one day. ’ ’ 
2. Indeed the theme succeeds in one way: it is a rather spirited narra¬ 
tive of “an unbusinesslike day.” 3. The theme is well unified on the 
topic of “an unplanned enterprise.” 4. The time order is beyond 
reproach; there is no fault to find with the coherence in any respect, 
except possibly with the abrupt shift of topic at “After finding some 
bright-colored paint.” 5. The first third takes us only as far as begin¬ 
ning to build the stand; at the end of the second third we are no 
farther on in business than the completion of the stand; and most of 
the last third is taken up with moving the stand. So nearly all of the 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


99 


theme is a description of “ preparing a place of business where no 
business could possibly be done. 7 7 6. The last paragraph is emphatic in 
the facts it gives, though the wording is listless. It fully explains our 
failure. 7. I asked you to explain how much it cost to make and 
market lemonade, and why there w T as a profit or a loss. But you have 
not so much as mentioned lemonade; you tell a story of “we had 
nothing to sell and no place to sell it.” This is not a business, but a 
failure to think of any business facts. 8. Probably the reply would 
be, 1 ‘ Oh, I thought you meant we should tell about some time when we 
wanted to make money.” 


ADDITION TO LESSON 25, PAGE 179 

This may be useful at times as pasturage for students who complain 
that they ‘ 1 can’t think of anything to write about . 7 7 I once found 
that a pamphlet of theme topics was being passed about surreptitiously, 
as a kind of immoral * 1 trot, ” in a ninth-year class—so much did the 
boys hanker for a display of possibilities. The writer of the A, B, C, 
and D skit was Professor H. A. Beers of Yale. 

Encyclopedia topics are likely to be deadly, because so few students 
have the power of digesting information and transferring it into a 
human expression of what is vivid and entertaining in their own minds. 
If a student has a little of the ability to assimilate and vivify, the 
encyclopedia is a good place to forage. 


LESSON 26 

It is literally true, for you or me or anyone, that if we have to 
select material from a big pile and have to compact what we select in 
small compass, we need to guide ourselves by an outline. Also it may 
be true—I think it is—that most students below the top ten per cent 
of a class are better taught by a requirement to outline such a 
subject in advance. One reason alone, familiar to all of us, is almost 
conclusive: the common failure (described on page 182) to apportion 
time. Students very commonly plead, as if they had a legitimate griev¬ 
ance, that “there was no time to finish” or that “I got way over on 
to page three before I realized where I was.” No such heedless waste 
of effort is excusable if a student has been taught to outline in advance. 

The principal virtue of an outline for a mass of material is that 
it guides to proportion. Hence I strongly favor the plan shown on 
page 184 of indicating in parentheses the fractional part that each 
division is expected to occupy. See in this connection “Think of the 
minutes and pages,” page 354. 

The outline of “The Orange Industry” is not proposed as an ideal; 
quite the contrary. The questions on page 182 and 183 may prove the 
most valuable part of the lesson. 


100 


WORKWAYS FOR 


“An outline can only indicate what some brain works out” (page 
183). There is no question that many students acquire a confidence in 
an outline as if it were a talisman that insured the virtues of compo¬ 
sition. Scribbling an outline can become an almost automatic process, 
which has no relation to purpose. Unless a writer thinks through his 
subject, unless his outline is a record of what he has thought, it is of 
no account whatever. 

Exercise I. The outline of the Chapter is as follows: 

I. Outlines for long themes 

1. Should show proportion 

2. Should be criticized for proportion 

3. Narrow the subject 

II. Outlines for shorter themes 

1. Must show a real line of thought 

2. Must show the order of topics 

3. Must show the grouping for proportion 

Number 3 under I might be called one of three major divisions, be¬ 
cause it does not explain outlining, but teaches a matter suggested by 
the outline that is spread before us. It is closely connected with the 
topic of long themes and concludes that section of the lesson. 

Exercise II. It would be hard to exaggerate the good that might 
be done by several exercises of this sort. The principal weakness of 
students in the upper years of high school is often said to be “that 
they can’t learn from printed pages.” The complaint most often made 
of college student is that they have small power to make a digest of 
what they read—which only means that they have not been trained to 
detect what each paragraph is about, how related paragraphs are 
grouped, and what the steps of the whole treatment are. They cannot 
be trained by exhortation, but only by some such specific assignments 
as outlining chapters. 


LESSON 27 

The difficulty of argument has never been sufficiently recognized. 
To be sure, there is a way of proving that argument is easy, for ingen¬ 
ious teachers in the seventh grade have roused spirited discussion that 
was kept within bounds and that resulted in what could be called argu¬ 
ment. But any step above that stage of “telling what I think and 
why I think so” is not to be regarded lightly. An attempt to persuade 
someone demands an exercise of a fine art. If you should search 
through the files of the English papers of an examining board, you 
would learn that good arguments are scarce. 

If we are to make any approach to the art, we have the best chance 
of success by seeking out the most concrete advice that is most gener¬ 
ally true. When I tell students, on page 187, “the great secret of 
argument,” I am not theorizing. Though this advice has never been 
prominent in textbooks and might seem a crotchet of mine, it appears 
to hold true of most composition that is persuasive, and I can testify 
that it has power for good in boys’ minds. I have never seen it fail. 
Time and again I have watched this one precept of “begin on the 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 1()1 

other fellow’s side” produce a lasting benefit in some artless mind 
that would never have reached the secret without such aid. Try it. 

Another recommendation, which may also appear somewhat novel, 
is that good argument ought to center on one reason. All published 
advice that I have seen, though it may talk about unity, conveys the 
impression that argument is a process of setting up, one after another, 
a job lot of reasons. “Now my fourth point is,” say the school 
debaters. I will not tilt against such an accepted method as making 
a fourth point. I will record, however, that a boy always seems to 
progress faster in argument if he can be persuaded not to make a 
fourth point, or even a third or a second. He will bo more effective if 
he focuses on one point and makes all his reasons culminate in that 
one. In Burke’s extended argument for conciliation there is no fourth 
point; in effect there is only one point. All the descriptions and 
arrays of numbered reasons display the one reason. Unity appears 
to me a greater virtue in argument than anywhere else. 

Of course ‘ * My Section Is Best ’ ’ is, technically, not an argument. 
Tho question is not debatable. But I have seen this theme do good 
and have never seen it cause misunderstanding. Its form and spirit 
are persuasive. 

“Did Peary Reach the North Pole?” is rather mystifying to some 
people and rather unpleasant to others. I need only say that I was as 
much antagonized by Captain Hall’s book and as incredulous about its 
argument as any admirer of Peary could be; I have always been pro- 
Peary and anti-Cook. But the book is persuasive; it is a powerful 
argument. Tho selection from it is a precious example for a text¬ 
book because it is likely to rouse angry feelings. “Why,” exclaims 
Mildred Smythe indignantly, “I don’t believe Peary was a faker.” 
But what answer can we conceive to this argument about arctic travel? 
The figures are not to be questioned. Captain Hall’s honesty is not to 
bo questioned; he is as fine an old gentleman as you could hope to 
meet, who has a manufacturing business in Omaha; in early life he 
commanded a whaling vessel to northern waters. 

An indignant student is likely to forget that this is a lesson in 
argument. It is curious to see how older people will fire up at the mere 
sight of an argument against the side in which they believe. Theme- 
Building is not maligning Peary or advertising West Virginia moun¬ 
tains; it is a textbook in composition. If it rouses any resentment in 
young minds, it is disposing them to argue. “It is no use to squirm 
or cry. What are you going to do with this argument?” The only 
motive to earnest argument is a wish to abolish some opinion. “Oh, 
shucks,” exclaims Bill Browne, “this West Virginia girl doesn’t know 
what argument is. She just raves about the perfectly lovely scenery.” 
Bill is on the verge of making a good argument. Whenever you can 
stir up indignation, you have a source of compositions that aim to 
persuade. 

One set of answers to the questions in the Exercise: 1. It suc¬ 
ceeds because it makes a strong appeal to the pride the audience feels 
in its own school, and thus disposes the audience not to be offended by 
the charge that there is much cheating in tho school. 2. He favors the 
honor system because he thinks that “an appeal to the honor of all” 
would succeed (par. 2). Ho regrets that nothing is said about dishon- 


102 


WORKWAYS FOR 


esty (par. 3), speaks of “necessity of being honest” (par. 4), of being 
“on his honor” (par. 5). 3. Since nothing is said about dishonesty, 

students are trained not to think of the moral question. 4. The para¬ 
graph does not show why and does not speak of discussing the honor 
system, but only of discussing the necessity of being honest. 5. The 
pupil is on his honor, and yet he signs a statement that he has not 
acted dishonorably. Honorable people do not assert that they have 
not lied or stolen or cheated. (Yet it is the fact that honor systems do 
require such signed statements.) 6. The climax simply makes the asser¬ 
tion of the glorious results that will follow; but the proof has been 
supposed to be made previously, and the climactic sentence would, be 
called a good and strong one by most judges of school composition. 
7. We find no facts whatever; all is hope and trust and theory. What 
is needed is examples of honor systems that have succeeded. 8. The 
great weakness is the assumption that “an appeal to honor will cure 
all the ills.” Not a particle of proof is offered. One who refutes 
should cite examples of the failure of the honor system and show how 
it has been known to induce a worse kind of cheating than the original. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 195 

“Structure, structure, structure.” Unless a teacher uses this idea 
three times as often as the book does, the class will not realize what 
the heart of its year’s work is. “If you wish to advance, you must 
increase your skill in structure.” No book or teacher can give the 
increase. Improvement is a matter of what you do in your own mind. 
Are you dozing, or are you always challenging the structure of each 
theme that you hear? 

ADDITION TO LESSON 27, PAGE 197 

In recent years Yale, Harvard, and Princeton have debated topics 
that undergraduates feel direct interest in. They have sometimes quit 
solving the world’s hugest problems and have talked about matters 
with which they have some direct contact and in which their emotions 
are enlisted. There is the key of all school searching for topics. Look 
among your own differences of opinion in your own daily life, “Look 
in thy heart and write” is more necessary for argument than for 
poetry. 

COCOANUTS ON THEIR WAY TO AMERICA, PAGE 200 

Many school curriculums now include such an informational course 
as ‘ ‘ Industry and Trade ” or “ Commercial and Industrial Geography. ’ ’ 
Such a textbook is a mine of material that will open students’ eyes to 
the marvels of our vast organizations for feeding and clothing ourselves. 
If students contribute the items of a list of what might be on any 
ordinary dinner-table, if you write the list as they dictate, and if there 
is some guessing at where the different items come from, many in the 
class will catch sight of a long prospect which they never saw before. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 
LESSON 28 


103 


The change in all literary styles toward an easy and colloquial tone 
has been greater since 1900 than we can easily realize. Just as for¬ 
mality in dress has ebbed rapidly in the last ten years, so has formality 
of diction waned in essays and novels. The stilted tone of textbooks 
is fast disappearing, and in letters the alteration is even more rapid. 
If we older teachers cannot overcome our antique prejudices in favor 
of dignity and courtly diction, we are lost. 

It is easy to misinterpret this loss of formality. Take clothes as an 
example. Though we are abandoning the silk hat and the Prince 
Albert coat, we are not substituting a cheaper or less artful kind of 
clothing. The new style, both in garb and words, is more exacting and 
expensive than the old. It is now, in our “talking ’’ letters, much 
easier to slip into bad form. The conversational tone is a higher and 
finer art. 

How far the world has gone toward colloquialism in all its inter¬ 
course is illustrated by the following sentences quoted from a Life 
editorial: 

Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, feeling the need of some dis¬ 
cussion with M. Poincar6 about the affairs of Europe, 
has addressed him in quite a new manner. Instead of 
talking to him like a diplomat he has talked like one human 
being to another, and M. Poincare instead of replying like 
a lawyer, as has been his wont, has answered him back 
really quite man to man. 

It is not likely that the mode of talking like a diplomat will ever return 
to the earth. We must adjust to the new mode if we would not be 
antiquated. 

Nor need we feel that our manners have lost ground. To me it 
seems that the new directness is a delightful and sensible change from 
the old affectation. Talking directly to a correspondent, as to a per¬ 
sonal friend, is a mode of communication that is rooted in the finest 
convictions of our nature. I like to quote, apropos, this sentence of 
Emerson’s: “The scholar sits down to write, and all his years of 

meditation do not furnish him with one good thought or happy expres¬ 
sion'; but it is necessary to write a letter to a friend—and forthwith 
troops of gentle thoughts invest themselves, on every hand, with chosen 
words. ’ f 

Anyhow, whether we quote Emerson in defense or shudder in defi¬ 
ance, it seems to be the fact that the world of business will never again 
put a premium on the impersonal and conventional. If our young 
people are to be fitted for life, they must be taught how to be personal 
and conversational—but always with the warning given at the bottom 
of page 202 “that advice about being personal may easily be misun¬ 
derstood. ” A good example of the wreckage that may come from 
misunderstanding is the Playtime letter on page 203. 

The underlying fact of the change in letter style is that we are try¬ 
ing to give up hypocrisy and adopt sincerity. The sincerity advised 
for thank-you letters is typical of all. And the underlying motive for 


104 


WORKWAYS FOR 


us to use in applying the advice is expressed on page 207—the fact that 
an untrained person cannot put himself on to paper, and that he must 
learn to work the miracle of making paper talk. 

The body of Theme-Building is not littered with any review of the 
mechanics of letter forms. Any review that is needed can be made 
fully with the Sentence and Theme material in the Appendix. 

The following is probably the most famous letter of condolence in 
the English language: 

Executive Mansion, Washington, 

November 21, 1864 

Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts, 

Dear Madam: 

I have been shown in the files of the War Department 
a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that 
you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously 
on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must 
be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you 
from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot 
refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be 
found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. 

I pray that the Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish 
of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished 
memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that 
must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the 
altar of freedom. 

Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 

Abraham Lincoln. 

The letters written for the Exercise will be purposeless and will 
furnish little training unless the class discussion focuses attention on 
the question: “What would the old gentleman most like to hear 
about V* He might be interested, after a fashion, in almost anything a 
boy or girl wrote—further adventures on the train, the queer accident 
in driving home from the station, w r hat we had for supper, what my 
home is like. But surely his chief interest would be in hearing about 
how glad the family was that someone had befriended one of its mem¬ 
bers. The description of “what I told the family about the kind man 
in the car” would be a natural and pleasing way of showing grati¬ 
tude to him. What father said, w r hat mother’s comment was, how 
little Nannie felt about it—these are the matters that would please 
him most. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 208 

The book says, quite mildly and briefly, that “scattering comment 
is worse than no practice.’’ A majority of students will not feel the 
force of that advice unless a teacher repeats once more to them, 1 ‘ This 
is a demand for structure. A letter will not help to train you, and 
will not be acceptable as a school task, unless it is constructed with 
care. ’ ’ 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


105 


LESSON 29 

Anyone who will ask a class to write “a letter that must be specific” 
will have evidence enough for his lifetime that training of this sort 
can hardly be too insistent. No ordinary student has any conception 
of carefully detailing the necessary items of exact time, exact number, 
exact place—and of not dilating on his emotions. In fact no ordinary 
adult has much of a conception until a few sad experiences have taught 
him. Recently I heard an Oxford tutor call up the Grand Central 
Station in New York to request the return of a pair of rubbers he had 
left on the train a hundred miles from New York; he did not specify 
which train he had been on; he was so conscious of the particulars of 
his loss that he had no thought of defining them. It requires consid¬ 
erable imagination to picture an official in the midst of thousands of 
complaints and to realize that I am a mere atom in the whirlpool that 
surrounds him. The seemingly matter-of-fact lesson on specific letters 
will never produce much effect unless a teacher understands that imagina¬ 
tions are being stretched. 

All good letter-writing is an exercise of the imagination. It requires 
that we visualize the person to whom we write, that we envisage his 
surroundings and prejudices, that we put ourselves sympathetically in 
his place. 

It seems to me that conventional invitations have been strangely 
overworked in schools. I am told of classes that have to write formal 
dinner invitations! In my life of half a century I have never received 
an engraved card summoning me to dine, and have seen only one. How 
many of your students ever will see one? Yet there is one valid reason 
for teaching the forms of acceptances and regrets: it is mortifying 
not to know the usual form if we ought to reply conventionally. 
To teach the form would seem a simple matter, since it consists of 
just one impersonal sentence. But I have seen many bright boys, 
somewhat familiar with these social demands, blunder ludicrously after 
studying a book lesson and after hearing and seeing me expound it at 
the board. If you are to teach conventional notes at all, don’t expect 
results until you have had several rounds of replying to invitations. 

Comments on the Exercises 

1. The great point, which will bear endless emphasis, is to specify 
unmistakably just when and where I left the parcel. We are so con¬ 
scious of our own doings and movements, and so engrossed with the 
importance of ourselves, that real imagination is required to visualize 
how unknown we are in a department store. 

2. The form of this invitation was guaranteed correct in 1924; it 
may contain some old-fashioned particulars in 1930. The engravers 
will not use any end-of-the-line punctuation, not even the logical comma 
after June or the period at the end. This is an interesting comment on 
how antiquated are the commas at the ends of lines in writing ad¬ 
dresses. A note of regrets should be neatly blocked in the center of 
the page, preferably written in short lines of about equal length, 
without dividing words. • The street number may be written out, but 
figures are proper, 


106 


WORKWAYS FOR 


Miss Ransom regrets 
that a previous engagement 
prevents her accepting 
the kind invitation of 
Mrs. Fisher for the 
sixth of June. 

107 Amster Road 
March sixteenth 

The * ( previous engagement ’ ’ is not necessarily a statement of fact; it is 
the common social formula for saying * 1 unable. ” If there is any 
explanation to be made—such as illness in the family—it should not go 
into the one sentence of formal regrets; an informal letter should be 
written to explain. 

3. Class discussion should encourage invention of details and put 
a premium on forming a clear mental picture of the conditions of the 
contest. If possible, some local situation should be substituted for the 
glee-club contest so that the letter may not be written too much in 
vacuo. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 215 

The list of subjects will yield disappointing results unless you have 
a clear conception of what kind of training you want this assignment to 
give, and unless you describe clearly to the class what is demanded. 
Suppose, for example, that you wish a fairly long and thoughtful 
letter which will contain some reasoning or explaining. If you simply 
say, “Choose a topic from page 215,” a boy could take number 4 and 
merely catalog the instances of poor telephone service. What subject 
is most in line with the kind of composition you have in mind? Is it 
the imaginary situation of number 8 or the dangerously broad uplift 
of number 9 or the exposition of number 10? Bo you wish to assign 
a given topic, or are you assigning a kind of treatment? 

Number 10 is a subject that appears elsewhere in the book and that 
is much on our consciences today; for any coach-made and home- 
judged debating is a bad influence. I have recently seen an article 
advocating that university students should be hired, like referees for 
football, to judge school debates. Some schools avoid the coaching 
evil by this plan: a well-known person is chosen to frame a question; 
he transmits this to the competing schools in sealed envelopes, which 
are opened 24 hours before the debate; the teams are on their honor 
to consult no one in preparing the debate, but work up their arguments 
by themselves in one day. This system puts a premium, not on being 
coached for a debate, but on being coached in debating. 

LESSON 30 

Opinions will always differ as to what constitutes “bad English,” 
and so the ways of handling this Exercise and the kinds of emphasis 
used must vary. For my, own part, I am as much concerned to discour¬ 
age ignorant judgments against idioms that “don’t sound right’’ as I 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


107 


am to encourage the finding of real errors. It seems to me harmful 
procedure to allow unfounded prejudices to be spouted in class as if 
they had some validity. They have none whatever. No sensible judg¬ 
ment can be rendered against an idiom until a judge has gained wide 
knowledge by impartially investigating. 

The most curious weakness of the average student is that he will 
gravely pronounce an expression “ wrong’’ or “vulgar” simply because 
it is common in everyday speech. For example, 11 a good many weeks ’ ’ 
may be supposed to be disreputable because it is commonly heard col¬ 
loquially. While it may be true that “a good many” is not suited for 
exalted oratory, it is equally true that it is used by the most impec¬ 
cable speakers when talking formally to a most impeccable audience. 
Any student who objects to it is absurdly hypocritical, or else woefully 
pretentious. 

Many eminent professors of English would shrug their shoulders 
at our objecting to some of the locutions in the Exercise—for example, 
“fixed up” in sentence 1, “wonderful feeling” in 2, “getting cold” 
in 5. They would warn us, quite rightly, that every cultured person of 
their acquaintance habitually says “getting cold.” So our.handling 
of colloquialisms must be wary. “Getting cold” and “wonderful 
feeling” are not wrong; they are tiresome habits of people who never 
think of using any other expression; we are telling them that “grow¬ 
ing cold” and “heartening sensation” are possible ways of breaking 
up the dreary monotony of get and wonderful. 

Corrections that should be made in the Exercise. 1. Almost always, 
put up a lunch. 2. Some substitutes for wonderful and nice —such as 
exhilarating and cheerful, or it is exciting and makes you feel happy. 
3. Manage or take care of my booth, if you can or if you will. 4. The 
ether hardly affected me at all. 5. Alice and I had sat (and perhaps 
growing for getting). 6. No change unless the colloquial tone is ob¬ 
jected to. 7. I’m not afraid that he won’t accept. 8. Some substitute 
for awful; beware of a labored word like destructive, for as a matter 
of fact cultured people don’t talk like that when exclaiming about the 
weather; emphasize that awful is not an error, but that we ought to 
know some substitutes, like dreadful or terrific or violent; use through 
for among. 9. Likely to be, fewer worries. 10. If I had not helped. 
11. May I, take this book. 12. No error. 13. Suspected (right away 
should not be objected to; it is curious to hear students preach against 
any phrase that is common in speech; they should be taught not to pose 
in the English class). 14. Got into or reached or arrived at, that was 
as far as I could go (the first got is not wrong, but the repetition of 
got and get is bad). 15. To the very remarkable way. 16. I suspect, 
fewer coats. 17. Lying, wasn’t able to see it or had no chance to see 
it. 18. Into my bedroom. 19. Avoid any stilted substitute for propo¬ 
sition, anything that would sound utterly unlike baseball talk. Perhaps 
some colloquialism like “hard nut to crack” or “too much for us to 
solve” or “had a mighty puzzling delivery” would serve. So perhaps aw¬ 
fully or mighty would sound more like honest talk than exceedingly. 20. 
Help wondering, the effect. 21. No error (don’t think has always been 
an established idiom). 22. No error. 23. No error. After these three 
errorless sentences impress the ide^ that it is worse to make objections 


108 


WORKWAYS FOR 


ignorantly than to overlook errors. 24. Take or carry a can, build a 
fire. 25. Its destination, to sit down. 26. No error. 27. Each of the 
boys was so afraid of the other, could hardly make them quit. 28. Can 
operate a set. 29. Oughtn’t to wear, a bad effect (and possibly do is 
used too vaguely). 30. Had lain, sat up. 31. Into the pantry (and it 
is good exercise to find a substitute for got, like found their way). 
32. Let the dishes stand (or stay or sit), Norda and I. 33. May I use. 


LESSON 31 

There is something comical in the way some old-line school rhetorics 
advised the improvement of style by artful repetition, while not giving 
any warning against the spoiling of style by heedless repetition. Con¬ 
trived and purposeful repetition is a high rung in the ladder of art; 
heedless repetition is a common pest that saps vitality in all school 
composition. I have never found much opportunity to teach students 
how to climb the ladder; there is perpetual necessity of showing them 
how to grub the weeds of doubled and octupled words. If your mind 
lias never been much disturbed about heedless repetition in themes, 
skip Lesson 31, for it can bring no benefit if taught half-heartedly. If 
you share my feelings, put your stress on pages 224 and 225; pass 
lightly over page 226. 

Yet it is important that a class should have to discriminate, as the 
Exercise requires, between purpose and sleepiness in repetition. If 
there were no such explanation as that on page 226, most students would 
suppose that “it is bad to repeat” and would pronounce the three lets 
in number 6 to be “bad.” If they do not learn to distinguish, they 
will feel that much of the emphasis in literature is * 1 bad. ’ ’ 


Comments on the Exercise 

1. No sensible writer could have designed to use before three times 
in this sentence. 2. High with highly colored has a ludicrous sound. 
3. For a while for a time is clumsy both because of the two fors and 
because of the similar meanings of while and time. 4. Coming outcome 
can not have been intended. 5. Waited to be wo/ited on must be an 
oversight. 6. The three lets are clearly designed for emphasis; so is 
the repetition of own. Our judgment must not be based on whether we 
like the emphasis; we must grant an author the right to be emphatic 
in that Ayay if he wants to be. 7. The sentence would not convey the 
contrast if sing were not repeated. 8. It is hard to conceive that the 
writer meant to repeat way, because the repetition does not emphasize 
anything; the repetition is mere carelessness. So of thinking used 
twice; since the two meanings are somewhat different, there is need 
not to repeat. 9. The repetition of ordinary is clearly for emphasis; to 
use two different words would distract us from the real thought. A 
clever student can say that in short is clumsy after the three previous 
ins that show position, though the fault is rather slight. 10. This is a 
typical example of the worst sort of aimless repetition; “after the car 
the next morning’’ we bear '-‘the next morning the car,’ ; 11. “In early 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


109 


years in oil-cars’ ’ is not serious, but is worth avoiding; the three carrys, 
the two petroleums, and the oil-cars and oil are quite aimless. 12. The 
three sames emphasize the entire sameness of the man. 13. The three 
repetitions of close give the whole tone of the sentence, which would 
have none of its force without the repetition. 14. Plant, plant is tire¬ 
some. 15. If the experiment of not repeating magic is tried, the class 
will discover how the dialog loses force; also the say in the last line. 
The repetitions are well designed. 16. Repetition of some sort of is 
“pure sleepiness. 17. Punning, running is poor. 18. The repetition of 
measures seems well planned, but give and gave are clumsy. 19. The 
point of the sentence is in repeating sane. 20. The first repetition of 
flock is good and necessary, but saying third flock and third flock is 
inexcusable; so is the second of ducks, quick and quicker, got and get. 


LESSON 32 

If, after you have seen the tenor of the comments on Lessons 32-36, 
you feel that I am too lax in my notions of pure English, don’t con¬ 
demn me too hastily. These are largely questions of taste, and we know 
that it is no use to dispute about tastes. I would only say that my 
ideas did not originate in my own brain, that I am by nature a con¬ 
servative, and that I should be as much of a stickler for purity as any¬ 
one if a great body of wisdom and authority had not made me wary 
of purism. Do you know Lounsbury’s Schoolmastering the Speech? It 
explains very entertainingly my point of view. It displays the folly into 
which we easily fall if we assume that we know the right rules for 
idioms and do not take pains to see whether our pet rules have any 
basis in usage. A reference book, alphabetically arranged, that shows 
convincingly by references to literature the good sense of Lounsbury is 
J. Lesslie Hall’s English Usage. Such books will explain the idolatry 
of which many teachers of English have been guilty. Any teacher who 
fights for idols of purity is doing w’orse than to waste time; he is rais¬ 
ing up in his community a distrust of his judgment on all points. 

In the first paragraph on page 231 is a census of errors that are 
common in school writing. It was made by going through some two 
thousand themes written for the College Entrance Board by students 
from' all sorts of schools in all parts of the country. It is the only 
estimate of this sort that I have seen. It is one of many recent efforts 
by teachers and schools of education to find out what particular attacks 
are most needed and w r hat familiar old attacks do not encounter any 
common blunders. Until a man has seen the frequency of the unre¬ 
lated it, he cannot credit the importance of this one point of attack on 
the embattled mistakes of syntax. Till he has counted the disfigurements 
produced by not only hut also, he cannot understand how prevalent 
this form of non-parallelism is. 

The description of errors in Lessons 32-36 is decidedly easy. My 
boys always earn high marks so long as they are reciting piously on 
how ‘ ‘ bad ’ ’ it is to allow participles to dangle. But all their righteous¬ 
ness is naught when the next week’s themes come in. The Lessons, and 
even the Exercises, will amount to little unless teacher and class are 
resolved that the work shall produce right hahits. 


110 


WORKWAYS FOR 


“Pay attention to the right words” in these Lessons. I have gone 
farther than any text-maker I know in avoiding the printing of wrong 
forms. I would on no account ever show a misspelling, or any error that 
is purely a matter of form. But beyond this limit of avoiding mere 
wrong forms of single words a book must not go too far. It would not 
be intelligible in discussing syntax if it did not announce what it is 
talking about. So far as I could I have thrown all the emphasis on the 
correct combinations of words, as on page 232, where the italicized were 
and are and have show what is right and do not confuse the student 
by posting before him both right and wrong constructions. But how 
shall I tell students about a false plural by attraction unless I show an 
example of what is meant? Time and again the critics of the old edition 
and of the copy for the new have told me, “Example needed.” They 
are unquestionably right. No student can visualize “a plural by attrac¬ 
tion”; he must see an illustration of the error. I have put the erroneous 
words in quotation marks wherever possible, * 1 to make them look 
wrong. ’ 1 

I heartily approve the general formula that “it is bad pedagogy to 
exhibit wrong forms”; but that dictum is strictly true only when the 
mere form is involved, as in spelling. The wrong spellings are almost 
never to be seen in print; they are not a mischief-making influence, 
and therefore should not be given an artificial prominence. But wrong 
combinations of words are everywhere to be heard; our training has to 
correspond somewhat to the sad facts of real life, and must furnish 
some work in distinguishing the right syntax from the wrong. But we 
must do all we can to reduce the emphasis on wrong combinations. Imi¬ 
tate the squeamishness of the book as far as you conveniently can; 
mention what is wrong as cursorily as possible and harp on what is 
right. 

Much of the effectiveness of Lessons 32-36 will depend on the rela¬ 
tive emphasis given to the constructions. The book does what it can to 
throw into relief the ones that seem to me most essential; but I dare 
not presume to shape the Lessons as if my ideas of relative importance 
were valid everywhere. Each teacher must make sharp the relief that 
he thinks advisable. In Section A, for example, the matter of a plural 
with there far outweighs all the other seven points; the question of a 
singular or a plural with a collective noun is rather academic and petty; 
the question of singular with or and nor, while it is much stressed in 
schools, is, compared with 1 f there was five, ’ ’ a prim nicety. 1 ‘ These 
kind” and “one of the worst storms that has” are to be heard so 
often from the lips of cultured people that they cannot be considered 
in the same rank of badness as “there was five”; they are not in the 
same class of vulgarity. 

Many books and teachers would have us believe that it is wrong 
idiom to say “heard of a man failing”; they suppose that the logic of 
“man’s failing” settles the case and that “man failing” is erroneous. 
Logic has nothing to do with the case. The fact of usage is, especially 
in England, that the possessive of a noun is in the majority of cases 
not needed; it may be a pure affectation. If such logic were applied 
in all cases, we should have to say “heard of that’s being done”; but 
a possessive of that is a form that does not exist in our language. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


111 


My observation is that a large proportion of careful speakers say 
11 should like to have gone. 11 I have a strong personal animus against 
such a perfect infinitive and regularly say 1 ‘ should have liked to go, ’ ’ 
but my prejudice is not a good guide. I had better, in view of the 
facts of usage, not rely upon it. Quite in a different class of idiom is 
a will or a would after in order that; a student is abused if he is not 
taught to use may and might. 

If you assay the fifteen points of syntax made in this lesson, you 
will find few that are vital, though every one ought to be understood 
by an A section. Hence my preference would have been to place the 
few most significant constructions in a first section of the lesson and 
to advertise the others as much less significant. I should have done 
so if all teachers would accept my judgments. But they will not. We 
all have our own very decided opinions and are shocked at the laxity of 
other teachers. So I must not compel the users of the book to undo 
its arrangement. I will indicate in the Comments on the next four 
Lessons what I conceive to be the idioms which deserve most stress. 
In many cases you will disagree. But you will surely agree with me in 
the general principle that we shall not be effective unless we make our 
decisions as to relative importance and spend most of our effort where 
it is most needed. 

The ideal way to use the material of Lessons 32-36 would be to 
assign some small part that is important in combination with a regular 
Lesson, to take up one by one these important matters; then, if there is 
time, to go through the Lessons again for less important parts; and to 
leave untouched the items about which we feel little concern. Such a 
use of the Lessons insures emphasis. One point, when discussed by 
itself, is impressed; twelve points discussed in one recitation are 
scrambled. 

Six years ago I should not have had any more faith in the benefit of 
“explaining the faults ’’ than you have now if you are a skeptic. I 
will not attempt any argument of the point, but will only say that my 
faith in this method was forced upon my very much surprised mind by 
classroom facts: I discovered that it was difficult to persuade boys to 
diagnose errors, that they could recast sentences without learning 
much, and that when I insisted on analysis as the prime requisite I 
taught them something. 


Comments on the Exercise 

Criticisms of errors in the Exercise might be as follows: 1. Has is 
used with the relative pronoun that, which is plural, since the antece¬ 
dent, pickerel, is plural. 2. Were is used with the singular subject, 
odor. 3. Was is used with the plural subject papers. 4. No error 
(the singular verb is required with an either-or pair like nail, holt). 
5. The past tense, glared, is used for an action that was complete (per¬ 
fect) before the time of looked in the main clause; could is used after 
in order that. 6. No error. 7. No error (for three dollars is not a true 
plural subject, but indicates a price, and should have a singular verb). 
8. No error. 9. I is used as the object of to. 10. Would is used after 


112 


WORKWAYS FOR 


in order that. 11. Whom is used as the subject of had stolen (the 
construction is “we thought who had stolen,’’ which is parallel with 
“we thought he had stolen”; ask any incredulous student if he would 
say “we thought him had stolen”). 12. 1 is used as the object of 
did tell. 13. Those is used to modify the singular noun sort. 14. If 
any student argues that lot means “an assorted collection” and ought 
to have a singular verb, let him have his way. But the fact of good 
usage is that the plural verb is demanded by the plural idea. Ask 
the conquering hero who wants “was” whether he would say “there 
was a hundred things”; the idiom with lot is just the same as w r ith 
hundred, and for the same reason. 15. Who is used as the object of 
to. 16. Can is used after in order that (there is a widespread belief 
that loud should always be an adjective, but loud, louder, loudest is a 
well-accredited adverb of ancient lineage). 17. No error ( who is the 
subject of were —“we supposed who were,” “we supposed they were”). 


A PHOTOGRAPHER’S TRIUMPH, PAGE 238 

A good way to use this picture of an eagle would be to make it a 
“purpose assignment.” Each theme should be preceded by a state¬ 
ment, perhaps in not more than one sentence, announcing the purpose 
that is to be followed out. Boys have been amused and have learned a 
good lesson when I have told them that the West Point cadets must 
always preface a recitation with the formula, “I am required to”— 
and then follows a statement of what they must prove or describe or 
correct. I have often thought that our school recitation would be bet¬ 
ter if we adopted that custom. Certainly every theme would be planned 
under better auspices if we answered for ourselves the queston, “What 
am I required to do? What is my one purpose?” A picture of an 
eagle might summon up a thousand purposes. If we blend two of these, 
we have no theme; if we dissect out one and are true to it, we accom¬ 
plish something. 


LESSON 33 

Impersonal they and you are ancient and honorable idioms, though 
some teachers rule them out because they are so likely to be overused 
or to be clumsily combined with a personal use in the same sentence. 
As for faulty reference, a teacher’s appetite for this error always 
increases by what it feeds on, until an unrelated personal pronoun 
becomes an obsession. We should step softly and curb our passion, for 
literature is thick-strewn with rather loosely used pronouns. We must 
cultivate care in reference, but we should beware of holding up any 
ordinary fault as a grievous blunder. 

Do you share my detestation of “his (Cox’s) turn”? Perhaps 
I am unduly excited against it. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


113 


In my estimation the misuses of it are far and away the most need¬ 
ful part of the lesson. Carelessness with it is more common than with 
all the other pronouns together. 


Comments on the Exercise 

A teacher who burns with zeal for the “purity’’ of our language 
will hardly understand why * 1 Tell everyone you see to lock up their ’ ’ 
is not a despicable error; since it is a logical absurdity and since all 
textbooks rate it as a vulgar mistake, we are apt to treat it as if it 
were in the class of “them things.” But good usage is not based on 

logic. It is a fact that “tell everyone.their” is employed 

by a large proportion of highly educated people who know all about 
the objection to the idiom and whose sober judgment is that the idiom 
is well established. That fact gives me pause when I am about to tell 
boys that the idiom is wrong. Another fact makes me hesitate even 
more: the stiff formality of “his” in sentence 1, and its failure to 
express the real feeling of the speaker, create in boys a distrust for 
my judgment in all other matters of diction. I cannot bulldoze them 
into respecting my judgment; I must earn their respect by showing 
a true knowledge of what language is. Language is not a game made 
by textbooks; it is an instrument of the great society in which I am a 
humble member. What that society does is right, and always has 
been right so long as there has been human speech. I am not a little 
czar of propriety because I teach English. 

So I do not assume to say that “their” is wrong in the first sen¬ 
tence. I say that many worthy people think it is wrong. Also I say 
that in other combinations this same use of “their” is evidently proof 
of ignorance. I say that every graduate of a good school ought to 
know that logic and much authority requires “his” and that in my 
class “his” is going to be required. It is quite possible that “their” 
is rapidly becoming standard usage; but it has not yet arrived at that 
high station. 

Descriptions of the errors: 1. Their refers to the singular every¬ 
one. 2. The three theys, but especially the second and third ones, are 
so used that they might refer to either masons or bricks. 3. No error. 
4. Is has reasons for its subject. 5. There is no antecedent for it. 
6. There is no antecedent for it. 7. Would is used after in order that. 
8. They is used impersonally, without any antecedent. This is by no 
means an error if we are judging by the ordinary standards of good 
colloquial usage, but it is good practice for students to note whether 
they really are wise in using a pronoun without an antecedent. 9. The 
second they might refer to either the people who give or to the gloves. 
10. They refers to the singular flat. 11. You refers, or seems to refer, 
to me. The real error is in the shift of construction from the particu¬ 
lar me to the impersonal you. The writer did not mean to make his 
conclusion refer to his own case alone; he meant that “when I have 
suffered this injustice, I think he ought not to treat people so.” 
12, Have is used with bell , when each bell is spoken of separately and 


114 


WOBKWAYS FOE 


demands a singular verb. 13. The she following the quotation might 
refer to either the speaker or the cat. 14. The third you, used imper¬ 
sonally, seems to refer to the very personal you that has gone before 
it; or, better, it is a clumsy shift of reference and construction. The 
impersonal you is hardly an error in itself. 15. All the personal pro¬ 
nouns in the that clause are ambiguous, because they might refer to 
either Gilford or his father. 16. Has is used for the plural hold-ups', 
has is used for that, which is plural because its antecedent, crimes, is 
plural. 17. Various solutions will be offered by the class. There is no 
need of the conjunction that before the noun clauses. There is not 
necessarily any wrong idiom in using “and they,” because it can be 
argued that there is a proper pair of noun clauses, equivalent to 
“[that] the posts were his property and [that] people ought not to 
use the posts.” The only out-and-out error is that they seems to refer 
to posts; if people were substituted for they, the sentence could 
pass muster. When it comes to recasting the sentence, there is a pretty 
opportunity to show the simple, oft-advised remedy of a compound 
verb for one subject will make all shipshape: “that the posts were his 
property and ought not to be used.” 


LESSON 34 

Whenever a boy’s mind is keyed to an artificial pitch, as when he 
is translating Latin or transforming English sentences, he turns to 
which. In his natural speech he seldom uses which; but when he goes 
on dress parade in writing, he will tell of “a chauffeur which” and 
“which thing is.” Teachers of foreign language tell me that it is 
difficult to secure a plain, ordinary, human that in translation; boys 
always swing to a pedantic which. Poking fun at which is a useful 
pastime. 

The matter of restrictive and non-restrictive relatives is a whole 
chapter in itself. It is only mentioned here, to draw attention to it 
and to give a teacher the opportunity of showing a class that they are 
in the bondage of an ignorance that will make them ludicrous. The 
subject is difficult to teach and has long caused despair; it is sometimes 
postponed to the senior year. You must decide to teach it with some 
thoroughness or not to touch it at all. Half-way measures will waste 
time. 

The repeated preposition of paragraph 23 is a gross error; the 
blunders of paragraphs 24-28 are slight in comparison. 

Every teacher knows the abuse of when and where, especially for 
definitions. The error is commonly attacked in the seventh year, but 
seems to survive, uninjured, in the speech of most college graduates. 

Comments on the Exercise 

1. The noun satisfaction is defined by a when clause. A true defini¬ 
tion would be in the form of “Satisfaction is the feeling that, or the 
condition of.” 2. No error. 3. There is no construction of that. The 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


115 


reconstruction of the sentence is by no means easy; one solution is 
“that are fastened by one pull on a knob and that don’t have to be 
buckled.” 4. Has is used with that, which is plural because its ante¬ 
cedent, antiseptics, is plural. 5. Was is used for the plural subject, 
chap and farmer; which refers to farmer (incidentally, it seems at 
first glance to refer to overalls). 6. A where clause is used to name 
what was in the paper; it has no antecedent. 7. No error. Them 
refers properly enough to people mentioned in a previous sentence. 
8. Of is used twice with only the one object, which. 9. Will is used 
after in order that. 10. No error. Would some over-nice students pre¬ 
fer a subjunctive were in place of was 1 * Such a subjunctive would 
destroy the point of the sentence; the meaning is “unless there actu¬ 
ally was”; it is not contrary to fact. 11. No error. 12. But which is 
used without any previous but. 13. Are is used to refer to the singulars 
one and other, which are used separately and ought to have a singular 
verb. 14. The conjunction that is used twice before the same noun 
clause. The second one should be omitted. 15. The conjunction that is 
omitted before a noun clause in apposition with superstition; the sen¬ 
tence feels as if there was a hole before the clause. 16. Since there 
is no comma before which, the sentence means “that particular Cin¬ 
cinnati which is smokier than Pittsburgh, but not all the other Cincin- 
natis.” 17. The sentence seems to say that “we did our hoping when 

Aunt Carrie came, ’ ’ whereas it must mean that ‘ ‘ we did our hoping be¬ 
fore she appeared”; the when clause must be intended to modify would 
bring in the noun clause that is the object of hoped. Hence a that has 
been omitted at the beginning of the noun clause, where it belongs, and 
has been confusingly inserted after the when clause. 18. A where clause 
is used to define the noun corduroy road; the noun should be defined 
by some other noun—“is a road made by laying,” etc. 19. The com¬ 
mas that set off the who clause can only mean “and I will remark, by 
the w r ay, that of course all women do have a lot of bonds and stocks in 
the bank. ’ ’ A clause which is very restrictive in meaning has been 
punctuated as if it were non-restrictive. 20. Was is used with the 
plural subject noises; the when suddenly clause is poor and tire¬ 
some. (“Just as I was thinking that the noises at the head of the 
stairs were rather suspicious, Dave Hursen tripped,” etc.) 


LESSON 35 

If I should ask a conference of a hundred English teachers what 
part of this Lesson they thought most important, I should not expect 
more than five per cent of them to name what I find most important in 
practice. I vote for the paragraphs about with. If that choice seems 
queer to you, observe with during the rest of the year. Don’t accept 
my judgment unless your experience confirms it. I may be over¬ 
wrought by my long enmity against this word. 

The word that has the greatest prestige of bad eminence is only, 
but for my part I am almost willing to omit the discussion of it. It 
is a fact of literature that only has been very commonly used before 


116 


WORKWAYS FOR 


the verb, at some distance in front of the emphasized word, as in “I 
only want a little.” One of the most prominent teachers in Massa¬ 
chusetts considers it wrong to teach students that they must say “I 
want only a little.” 

We all seem pretty well agreed that dangling verbals are prevalent 
errors that need attention. I agree. But I must admit (what I didn’t 
know till ten years ago) that unrelated participles are strangely numer¬ 
ous in literature. The modern scientist could not live without his 
* < coming now to the third point, it is seen that. ’ ’ I need not proclaim 
to my class that all users of dangling participles are ignoramuses; I 
simply believe that students ought to be taught to know what they are 
doing with their participles and to avoid dangling if a school forbids 
it. 


Comments on the Exercise 

1. With is clumsy and meaningless (try because of) ; these is used 
to modify the singular noun kind. 2. Whatever our own feelings about 
only may be, we should remember that many teachers who are eminently 
cultured and sensitive would consider it pure dogmatism and purism to 
insist that the position of only must be shifted in this sentence. There 
may be a certain primness or hauteur about 11 only a couple of minutes. ’ ’ 
Yet we are certainly right in showing students that they ought to 
know how to put only close to what it intensifies. If it comes before 
had, it seems to emphasize that “we only had.” The idea is that we 
had to wait ‘ 1 only a very short time. ’ ’ Since there is no comma before 
who, the sentence means ‘ 1 f or that particular Marie who is seldom 
ready, but probably we had to wait a long time for all the other 
Maries.” A very non-restrictive clause, adding a side-remark about 
Marie, is made to be restrictive and tell about this girl as distin¬ 
guished from all the others. 3. A where clause is used to name what 
was in the column of jokes. 4. Without and with are used in a 
clumsy combination; that has no construction. 5. No error. 6. Before 
comes clumsily at the end of the sentence, far from the heard which it 
modifies. 7. That is used twice before the same noun clause, “he would 
have called”; was is used with the plural subject Smiths. 8. There is 
no real error in omitting conjunctions before the two noun clauses, but 
the result sounds as if the second one were an independent clause. How 
many in the class can explain that there are two parallel subordinate 
clauses in the sentence? Perhaps not one can. Two thats would be far 
preferable. How many failed to notice that good is used as an adverb? 
It would be interesting and useful to get a poll of the class on this 
point before anything has been said about good ; a very brief written 
test would secure the information. 9. Happy seems to modify evening. 
10. Even comes clumsily at the end of the sentence, far from what it 
modifies. ( Even is usually better placed if it is before the stressed 
word, in this case before have , or possibly before for. But no ruling 
on tills point can be absolute; even may come after the word it inten¬ 
sifies.) 11. Does they, refer to the people who had been posing or 
to several people who had been managing the cameras? Unless they 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


117 


are the ones who have been standing, the participle standing is misre- 
lated. Which is used to refer to operator. 12. To my mind is mis¬ 
placed and is used restrictively. (Try “is, to my mind, very 
distracting.’’ Why wouldn’t to me be more natural?) 13. With is 
clumsy and meaningless, and is used restrictively; it has no antece¬ 
dent. 14. Sniffing seems to modify it. 15. That after raw materials is 
a repetition of the conjunction. 16. With seems to say that the wheels 
have been painted “blue with black.” 17. No error. A very doubtful 
and weak nominative absolute, though not exactly an error in syntax. 
(Try an as or a since clause, or “because of my mother’s failure to 
understand.”) 18. The noun side-swipe collision is defined by a 
when clause. (Try “is running alongside a wreck that,” etc. The 
when clause is so easy and understandable that it makes us wish the 
idiom would come into good usage.) 19. Sweetly is used as a predicate 
adjective. 20. The is omitted before West and before United States. 
(If no the is used before East , none would be needed before West; we 
must have two articles or no article.) 


LESSON 36 

The high spots for me in this Lesson are numbers 45, 46, and 47. 
The non-parallelism caused by these words is an extremely common 
fault and produces effects that are deplorable. A non-parallel con¬ 
struction in a sentence is not, like the position of only, a matter of 
disputed judgment; it makes all the judicious grieve. 

The next most essential part of the Lesson is paragraph 55, our old 
enemy of failure to subordinate. 

The Lesson has in it more possibilities of producing noticeable results 
in themes than any of the preceding four Lessons. The reason is plain; 
it does not deal with the choice and arrangement of single words, but 
with the adjustment of large elements of the sentence. 

If several years of experience had not taught me the strange fact, 
I never could have believed that the effective way to conduct a recita¬ 
tion on this Exercise is to describe what construction is falsely made 
parallel with what construction. The student who has to make that 
analysis of what is wrong learns about parallelism; the student who 
merely recasts may learn very little. 


Comments on the Exercise 

1. “Many beautiful chairs” is made parallel with “we found 
also.” 2. “That a blue light had been seen” is made parallel with 
the two of phrases. 3. Which is made parallel with that. 4. “To spend 
his time” is made parallel with “could he afford.” (Strict parallelism 
would require “could afford neither to pay nor to spend”; and that is 
the safe model for teaching the principle. As a matter of fact there is 
some good warrant in usage for the form that sounds less labored— 



118 


WORKWAYS FOR 


“could neither afford to pay nor to spend.”) 5. No error, though a 
safer model of arrangement would be “everything was now spotless and 
newly painted in the kitchen, where.” 6. The following four construc¬ 
tions are made parallel: the passive participle printed; the nominative 
absolute noun letters, unmodified; the absolute phrase design standing 
out; the absolute construction “many of the lines zigzag.” 7. In is 
used after delight and must therefore be understood after fondness, 
but there is no such idiom as “fondness in.” (Try “He seems to 
have a fondness for these silly puns and a perfect delight in them.”) 

8. It is has been made parallel with which can he. used; a relative 
clause and an independent it clause are used as if they were similar. 

9. The two negative statements are parallel in form, but they are joined 

by an also which indicates two positive statements. It may be that 
literature furnishes examples of also linking negative assertions, but did 
“also not” ever sound proper in a school theme? 10. Not expect is 
made parallel with you must have . 11. The independent clause they 

look is made parallel with a because clause. Or can some student 
explain that because is easily understood with the second clause? If 
so, he is probably right. 12. The independent clause it is has been 
made parallel with the adjective correct. 13. To see has been made 
parallel with by ringing. 14. Only emphasizes had been set instead 
of five; also links a negative statement; was is used with the plural 
subject forks. 15. Probably the two modifiers ( light weight, fine in 
quality) are sufficiently parallel; the trouble is that they are used after 
a dash, in an appositive way, to show a reason. 16. If is made parallel 
with whether. (The shift of conjunction perhaps corresponds to a 
shift in the speaker’s way of thinking about the weather, and is cer¬ 
tainly a slight error.) 17. The omission of that before the second 
noun clause makes it seem as if the second clause were not parallel, 
but were independent; the two Urns, referring to Curtis and Ned, are 
confusing. 


LESSON 37 

The usual treatment of coordinate clauses in textbooks would make 
us suppose that we could tell when clauses are equal in importance. 
The implication always has been that a rhetorician can estimate the 
relative value of two ideas by a sort of critical scales and tell which is 
heavier. But I have never been able to find any such measure of ideas 
and consider it a myth. Open any well-written book at random, as I 
am now going to open Kim, and see what you find. Here are pages 254 
and 255. I see these three puzzles, put into the mouth of Lurgan 
Sahib, who is made to speak in a highly dignified style: 

His honor is great only in Simla, and it is noticeable 
that he has no name. 

From time to time, God causes men to be born— and thou 
art one of them—who have a lust to go abroad. 

Among these ten I count the Babu, and that is curious. 

When we know that Kipling wrote these sentences and when we feel 
their exquisite diction and rhythm, we are straightway satisfied with 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


119 


the ands, and we can concoct an explanation of them as ‘ ‘ proper. ’ ’ But 
if the authorship were unknown and if the sentences were robbed of 
their beauty of words (while the relative “weight ’ 1 of the ideas 
remained the same) and if these altered sentences were mingled with 
seven others in a list for an intelligence test given to professors of 
English, it would be a safe bet that the Kipling “balance” would be 
severely condemned. In each case the two constructions connected by 
and are dissimilar; there is decided non-parallelism. What do you 
think of them when the diction is altered? 

His business is only successful in Waterbury, and it 
is a fact that he has no reputation. 

Mrs. Brown orders jobs to be done —and this is one 
of them—that have a mighty suspicious look to me. 

I guess that Patrick is one of these three men, and 
that is queer. 

After some years of pondering the question of “relative importance 
of ideas” I conclude that the task is altogether too delicate for my 
clumsy mind. If you can feel the subtle differences, you will go an¬ 
other way to work. If you are like me, you will be wary of criti¬ 
cizing and sentences because they do not conform to literary standards. 
You will find yourself in the position that is now familiar to any user 
of Theme-Building: The fact that professionals venture to hitch un¬ 
like clauses together with and is no proof that such hitching is good 
practice for you in school. Learn the normal way of making your 
clauses “combine to produce one effect.” When you are master of 
this apprentice requirement, you may play with unbalanced forms. 

It is true that George Eliot, with her sure instinct for logic, usually 
did balance her clauses rather carefully; it is true that most authors 
have in most cases balanced their clauses, and that schools ought to 
require balance. But it does not seem true that literature has set any 
such standard of ‘ ‘ equal weight ’ ’ as the rhetorics have taught. If a 
teacher is not clear in his own mind as to the usage of and, he will 

convey error to a class. _ — _ 

There is no way of applying an exact standard to the sentences in 
the Exercise. We must not be intent on standardizing. Our minds 
should be in an easy and tolerant mood, ready to accept any sensible 
answer. What we want to teach is this: Think when you make an 
and sentence and notice whether it sounds right to you; if you are 
not heedless, you will hardly make blunders. 


Comments on the Exercise 

1 Not really bad, because a writer may have designed to make two 
statements rather than the one statement that “the boy had set and 
watched.” 2. Same reasoning as for No. 1; and the time in the two 
clauses is different. 3. Poor because we shift from what he did to 
what was done by us. 4. Poor because all that follows dreamed is a 
pair of items telling what he dreamed; one of them ought not to be 


120 


WORKWAYS FOR 


made independent. 5. Poor because the fact that the place was a cafe 
and the description of how it was conducted are not similar and not of 
equal importance. 6. Not bad, for the writer may have wished to 
make one statement about the smallness and dapperness, another about 
the contrast with Gilmour. 7. Might be a good sentence in the right 
context; the two actions of the two people may “combine to produce 
one effect.” 8. Poor because the starting to read and the important 
contents are not equal in kind. 9. Hard to imagine how this could be 
a good sentence; the fact that the news came does not deserve to rank 
with the fact that it killed her. 10. The fact of what its name is and 
the description of it are not similar in kind or importance. 11. Very 
likely a good sentence, telling the action of one character in each 
clause. 12. Easy to make fun of, but balances pretty well; the late¬ 
ness of the hour is important and may well deserve to be parallel with 
what the captain did because of the lateness. 13. Perfectly proper 
balance of what you have been doing and what I want you to do now. 

14. A good balance of how skilful I was and how badly he was worsted. 

15. Poor because the mere fact that I have been studying is not simi¬ 
lar in kind or importance to what I have learned. The real fault is in 
the shift of subject, from I have to there are. 16. There may be some 
condition in which these two statements would be understood as a pair 
contributing to one effect; but how can they be fitted together? The 
sentence seems very poor. 17. Quite a normal type of sentence in 
literature: the change of weather, the resulting change in my position. 
18. No objection would have to be made to this if it was in a setting 
of good complex sentences: the fact that she is fat, the fact that my 
chum jokes about her fatness. 

Perhaps at this point you will think that I am too lenient, that 
hardly any and sentence can be objected to on principle if 18 is tol¬ 
erated. The fact is that most of our strictness of logic about and 
sentences is not borne out by authors. We shall set up a false stand¬ 
ard if we insist too much on any such logic. Indeed I have probably 
gone too far in attempting to show reasons against some of the sen¬ 
tences in the Exercise. The way of facts, and of safety for us, is to 
admit the truth about many literary examples and to insist on the 
greater truth that these are not designed as models and that they are 
not common. 19. Sentence 19 cannot be pronounced wrong by any ab¬ 
solute standard, for he will have such a position and will tell such 
thoughts. 20. Not necessarily bad, for it balances with what I did 
and how they responded. Yet sentences 18-20 are just the kind that 
infest and paralyze school composition because of their frequency. 

THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 272 

For examples of newspaper accounts that furnish material for 
stories see the comments on the Addition to Lesson 19. 

LESSON 38 

The use of a short', emphatic sentence, or of a series of such sen¬ 
tences, between long sentences is almost sure to have a good effect, and 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


121 


it doesnot require artistry. If you see an example in a theme and com¬ 
mend it, you may find that you have cultivated a crop of variety. 

The three devices on page 275 require more knack than those given 
in the earlier lessons, but any intelligent student could easily learn to 
adorn his composition with an occasional use of them. The periodic 
sentence is often artificial; it is almost sure to be so if an ambitious 
student resolves to make it as a display. It is to be encouraged only 
when it occurs naturally to a writer, and only once in a while. 


Comments on the Exercise 

Boys who do the Exercise with good spirit may not incorporate one 
sample of their training in their next theme. An exercise and a theme 
are in different regions of the brain. A teacher must always be dredg¬ 
ing out the canal that connects the two sorts of work if the Exercise 
is to produce any effect in composition. 

Exercise I, first paragraph. 1. Short simple. 2. Long complex be¬ 
ginning with an adverb clause, which is followed by four items that 
are really equal to little independent clauses in which verbs are un¬ 
derstood, and which closes with a relative clause. 3. Very short simple. 
4. Compound with but. 5. Short simple, containing three prepositional 
phrases. 6. Complex beginning with an adjective; the subordinate 
clause has a compound verb of three parts. 

Exercise I, second paragraph. This passage was chosen, not for its 
artistry, but because it is a sample of modern journalistic style. It 
contains a larger proportion of short sentences beginning with the 
main subject and verb than most students should venture to have in 
their themes. 1. Short simple, beginning with a conjunction that is fol¬ 
lowed by an adjective. How often does a teacher hear or see in 
themes a sentence that shows such a beginning? 2. A two-word ques¬ 
tion. How many in the class ever used one? 3. A three-word state¬ 
ment. Making two sentences out of five words is certainly producing 
varied forms—even if we don’t like them. 4. Simple and not long, 
yet a type almost never paralleled in themes; the dash is followed by 
a repeated preposition with a different object. 5. A six-word simple 
sentence. Isn’t this overdoing the shortness? 6. Complex, not long, 
and beginning with the main subject and verb, yet as a people used 
parenthetically is almost enough to prove that no amateur wrote the 
sentence. 7. Complex beginning with and, which is followed by a 
preposition; the noun clause which is the subject of the verb comes 
after the verb. One sentence on that model would lend a kind of 
glory to many themes. 8. Short and simple, with a compound subject. 

9. Very short and simple—but look at the two words which begin it. 

10. Long simple sentence beginning with a prepositional phrase and 
containing a compound verb of three parts. 11. Another six-word 
simple. 12. Short simple, but it closes with an infinitive of purpose. 
13. Long compound with and. 14. Complex, the noun clause used as 
subject comes after the verb. 15. Another six-word simple. 16. Long 
complex, with three phrases in the main clause and two balanced be¬ 
cause clauses. 


122 


WORKWAYS FOR 


A BEDOUIN LUNCHEON, PAGE 278 

If students were left to themselves, a majority would read about 
some race and then try to tell all about it in 300 words. So slowly 
do they learn to limit subjects. A school theme cannot be written about 
a whole people. We must seek for some phrase like “women’s rights 
among the Berbers” or “a corroboree” or “how does an Eskimo get 
vitamins”? The class would drowse if page 279 contained a quota¬ 
tion about Bedouins from an encyclopedia; they will always remem¬ 
ber the long loaves of bread. The same kind of difference exists be¬ 
tween a digest of a great lot of facts and a theme that limits itself 
to making a picture of one phrase. 

LESSON 39 

Do you agree with me that “one complete thought” is the purest 
metaphysics? If you do not, read the indictment against grammatical 
definitions made by Otto Jespersen in the English Journal for March, 
1924. I cannot understand how the “one complete thought” definition 
has been able to flourish so long in textbooks. Take the dictum that 
“each sentence must say a single thing” and apply it to any page of 
literature; a compound sentence says at least two things and could 
properly be made into two sentences if a different emphasis were 
needed. Take the dictum that “a sentence is a unit when it conveys 
a single thought” and place it alongside a complex sentence that 
indubitably contains five single thoughts. Any dictum about unity of 
sentences is mythology. All we can say, if we want to remain truth¬ 
ful, is that we must grow familiar with the limits that usage has put 
on the length and contents of acceptable sentences. Lesson 39 is an 
exhibit of sentences that custom calls unified and of sentences that 
custom calls lacking in unity. There is no objective measure of 
unity that has any meaning if we try to apply it strictly to literature. 
All is a question of custom, of usage. 

The longer we teach, the more we come to rely on the simple, un¬ 
scientific advice about and, and but on page 287. 

Comments on the Exercise 

Possibilities for the Exercise: 1. Those few who are not pre¬ 
vented by the danger and expense of taking this chance are very for¬ 
tunate. . 2. In spite of our fear of the lynx, the roaring fire that we 
built could not prevent our falling asleep again—even while the scream 
was echoing among the rocks—and sleeping soundly for an hour. 3. 
Why shouldn’t we try a broom for this very light snow? 4. I shook 
down a ripe fig into my hat, cut the little sprouts from each end, and 
then, holding it between my finger and thumb at these two points, pared 
off the prickly rind with my knife and gave a piece of the fruit to the 
boys—who approved it most highly. 5. When at last, after a full 
month of labor, the bungalow was completed, even to the furniture 
(made in the neighborhood from raw material), the night of the house¬ 
warming was a celebration not soon to be forgotten. 6. When, after 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


123 


his very studious youth, he became a tutor to the younger boys, his 
teachings were of a sort that brought him into disfavor with the people 
of Athens. 7. Though I tried to ride fast on my bicycle, the air was 
so exceedingly hot that I seemed to be just moving. 8. I hurriedly 
obeyed the angry yell of the policeman to “get off that sidewalk 
mighty quick.” 9. Although Colorado has delightful summers, its 
winters are so severe for Easterners who are not acclimated that it 
cannot rival California. 10. The long hours at the market—from four 
or five in the morning till five in the afternoon—will not prevent me 
from liking my work very well, because the men are so sociable and 
gentlemanly. 


LESSON 40 

I fear that I seem like an iconoclast, determined to smash current 
opinions about rhetoric, when I say that I can see no reality in cus¬ 
tomary definitions of “unity” of sentences and paragraphs. Yet I 
have no wish to overthrow standard opinions. I don’t like revolution 
and destruction, and I invite no teacher to try to use my skepticism if 
it disturbs him. But I must call attention to a doubt that has been 
useful to me. I have found that I struggle with dry nothings if I 
approach sentences and paragraphs with an abstract definition of 
‘ ‘ unity. ” If I honestly apply the definition to the paragraphs of 
literature, most of them are proved to be unfit; they simply will not 
measure up to textbook assumptions. The makers of literature have 
never written by any such definitions. The only people who feel secure 
about the definitions are those who never test them. Suppose that 
you put the Gulliver paragraph (page 289) into modern vernacular, 
substituting modern names and ideas, slipped it into a poorly written 
theme, and asked a committee of teachers to criticize the paragraphs. 
This paragraph of Swift’s would be treated with contempt, as some¬ 
thing unworthy of even good high-school composition. 

If you think that an extreme statement, you must be unfamiliar 
with the many similar experiments that have been made in teachers’ 
colleges. It has been proved again and again that idioms used by the 
masters are judged intolerable if they appear in a mimeographed list 
of blunders; that approved stanzas of poetry are judged inferior to 
prettified versions of them. Our nice little standards of excellence do 
not work when applied to unknown material. Our measure of “para¬ 
graph unity by a topic sentence” will not work when applied to the 
paragraphs in the classics. 

All I can observe about the unity of literary paragraphs is that 
each is a step forward in the progress; each can be seen, in its set¬ 
ting, to be one step. But it very often has no topic sentence and, if 
detached from context, may not be “unified” according to our school 
recipes. That truth need not dishearten us by making our work seem 
hopelessly vague; it merely keeps us free from the assumptions that 
our teaching devices originate in literary models. A topic sentence is 
not a prevalent truth in literature; it is principally a tool of non¬ 
literary exposition and of teaching non-literary students how to stick 
to a topic. 


124 


WOEKWAYS FOR 


Criticisms of the Paragraphs in the Exercise 

1. Well unified on the topic of “Hadley’s melancholy caused by dis¬ 
appointment in love.” The first sentence speaks of “loss of enthu¬ 
siasm,” the second of his “melancholy,” and the others explain the 
cause of the melancholy. Perhaps the second sentence, about “seeking 
the reason, ’ ’ could be called a topic sentence, but there is no evidence 
that the writer used it as such; it is not an announcement. 

2. It need not be true that “the first sentence announces the topic 
of Cedric’s character, but the other sentences forget the character and 
run into a description of a scene,” though that statement happens to 
be nearly the truth. So far as we can guess, the author did suppose 
that her first sentence was announcing a topic; but we have no right to 
assume that until we have read the whole. No form of criticism is so 
easy or so likely to go wrong as this formula of “what the first sen¬ 
tence announces, ’ ’ for it would discredit half the paragraphs of Eng* 
lish classics. Most students dote on the formula and should be con¬ 
stantly required to beware of it. But in this case the fact is that 
the second sentence carries on the idea of “character” and clearly 
indicates that the following description is for the purpose of “ bring¬ 
ing out Cedric’s character”; also the last sentence returns, strongly and 
well, to the character-sketch; and the seven sentences between help 
toward an understanding of what manner of man he was. The para¬ 
graph is ,hardly lacking in unity. The weakness is that the one topic 
is really forgotten through the four sentences that begin “Outside,” 
for these describe a situation and make poor emphasis and proportion. 
The first sentence may have been designed to announce the topic, but 
it did not prevent the wandering into description. 

3. The first three sentences tell of the uniform and arms of an 
officer, and the fourth and fifth sentences (it might be argued) carry 
on this topic by explaining why officers have nothing but side-arms to 
carry. But “equipment” has become dominant over “uniform”; then 
comes the duty of lieutenants to be near their men; then comes ‘ ‘ train¬ 
ing. ” The paragraph is about as bad as could be made. There is 
no sign that the waiter had ever heard of a topic sentence—much less 
of one topic for one paragraph. 

4. The first three sentences are all about the survivor, Schulz; the 
last three tell us that no one else survived. Almost these identical sen¬ 
tences could easily be made into a unified paragraph about “all but 
one of the traitors died”; yet, as the paragraph now stands, we cannot 
determine whether the topic is “the survivor” or “all the rest per¬ 
ished.” There is no evidence that any sentence w T as supposed to an¬ 
nounce the topic, but the unified paragraph could well lead up to, and be 
summarized by, “Fate had laid her hand.” 

5. Apparently the first sentence was expected to suggest the topic of 
“more light,” and this is adhered to through four sentences. Then in 
the last three we have the window-opener and the general comfort. 
The paragraph might, possibly, have been made unified by linking the 
items in such a way that they would lead up to the last sentence as a 
topic-announcer. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 125 

THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 293 

“A beautiful scene has, no power of its own to pass from our brain 
to other people’s brains. ’ ’ The most convincing demonstration of this 
that I ever had was a theme about a burning steamer in the South 
Pacific. It was so lifeless that the class thought it a very poor effort 
at romance, and I had no doubt that it was pure lazy fancy. Yet the 
writer had actually been on the vessel that rescued the passengers of 
the burning steamer. His theme was read in the same recitation with a 
description of catching a mouse. The mouse theme was easily the most 
entertaining description of the day, and the steamer theme the dreariest. 
The contrast has been of constant value to me when described to suc¬ 
ceeding classes. 

I have wondered why we are so unable in oral composition to tap 
that abundant source of energy, the desire to talk. In private con¬ 
versation we all want the floor; we are uneasy if someone else talks 
for long; we admire the restraint of anyone who is a good listener. If 
formality can be put aside in a class, we should be able to achieve 
much with “what you like to talk about.” 


LESSON 41 

Of course “one purpose’’ is simply unity. It refers to an attitude 
of mind, to asking, “What am I trying to do here?” It is a living 
motive rather than an abstract sense of oneness, and is a more potent 
way of thinking than an effort to conceive unity. Of course, also, 
paragraph 3 about “needless information” could properly be classed as 
a matter of proportion. Unity and proportion are overlapping and in¬ 
tertwined virtues. Paragraph 4 is really a drive at being concrete, 
specific, naming some facts; but this accusation of “omitting the im¬ 
portant thoughts ’ * will do more to cause smiles and make the point 
visible than a discourse on “specific detail.” 


Comments on the Paragraphs in the Exercise 

A. Every part of every sentence in the first paragraph is true to the 
one purpose of describing the new thirteen-month calendar. In the second 
paragraph we feel one purpose, “how hard it will be to get the 
country used to it”; but the illustration from English history is not 
well linked to Americans nowadays. The third paragraph has two 
purposes: (a) to show that modern Americans will not be so slow to 
adopt a new calendar, (b) to argue for the advantages of the calendar. 

B. No one purpose can be seen, for we are led from “how hard it 
was for me to work ” to “ still I have, like the rest of humanity, learned 
to work” to “why they wanted me to work.” 

C. The first paragraph has one purpose, to announce that I am going 
to argue for compulsory training. The second paragraph turns from 


126 


WORKWAYS FOR 


“advantages of voluntary training” to “disadvantages”; since this 
turn is made in the middle of a sentence (“but, on the contrary”), 
the author appears not to know what his/ purpose is. Perhaps the 
purpose of the third paragraph is to contrast the disadvantages of com¬ 
pulsory training (first five sentences) with the advantages (last three 
sentences), but it takes close, careful study to find this purpose—and 
then we are not sure of it. The fourth paragraph has a definite pur¬ 
pose of summarizing the advantages of compulsory training, and this 
is clear throughout, except in the second sentence, where we read that 
“a boy would work harder” and are puzzled for a moment. 


LESSON 42 

These ten paragraphs continue the five paragraphs of Lesson 16, the 
comments on which fit here. The Lesson will be more valuable to any 
student who will try to “give something of the life of the author’s 
style, as if you cared for his skill.” 

Possible Descriptions of the Transitions: 6. The impression of 
‘ ‘ wailing with full lungs ’ ’ at the end of paragraph 5 is carried on by 
“things were getting simply infernal” at the opening of 6, before 
we “strike out blindly” for a “complete change of environment.” 
The larger part of paragraph 6, as explained in the brackets, is taken 
up with thinking over 11 the grand kinds of life ’ ’ that he might lead; 
hence this main impression is well carried on by “of all professions” 
at the opening of 7. The fancy of being a general, a fabled hero, who 
gives the older people a good talking to, is carried on with “this 
pleasant conceit”; we are led along to the new fancy by “some twenty 
minutes” and “then the old sense of injury called for new plasters.” 
After “happy thoughts of the sea,” of being commander of a pirate 
craft, in 8, we are led along to a description of the convent by “when 
I brought myself back from the future to the actual present.” . Then 
I see the building of gray stone. The author carefully shows by several 
past-perfect tenses that he is now taking, the reader back to a time of 
a previous visit to the place. From this description of the past we are 
brought to the present by “for paying friendly calls” at the end of 
the first sentence of 10, and by “harmonized with my humor” in the 
second sentence. This care of the author when he changes the time 
is worthy of comment. “Thereupon,” in the third sentence, a new 
fancy swims up—that of being a monastic brother. The fancy is ab¬ 
ruptly broken by the one word “whack” at the end of 10. “A well- 
aimed clod” at the opening of 11 is a natural sequel and explanation 
of “whack.” The paragraph tells of preparation for answering the 
attack. “As I expected” continues the description of the strategy 
and leads to the moment when “I issued from shelter” and began my 
counter-attack. After the tussle and the bawling retreat of the van¬ 
quished boy in 12 we are carried on to what I did by “but as for me” 
in 13, which tells of my elation in victory. As long as a person is in¬ 
dulging in morose or exciting fancies, he is not hungry; so the close of 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


127 


13 “feeling villainously hungry”—shows that the fight has brought 
the boy back to real. life. Where should a small boy’s thoughts turn, 
where should he go, if he is hungry? Why should an author, who has 
perhaps been over-careful about linking paragraphs, be obliged to say 
in set terms, “I decided to start for home to get some lunch”? It is 
a good point to furnish a reader variety by not making a studied tran¬ 
sition to 14, but to start home without naming home. When I arrive, 
I learn from Harold that Edward has not been ungrateful and that all 
the gloom has vanished from the children’s lives. Now comes an en¬ 
tirely abrupt beginning of 15. Why is there no transition? Perhaps 
most of the class—at least the boys—are near enough to The Golden 
Age not to realize that all the mass of childish fancies and adventures 
amount to nothing in comparison with the tragic reality of Martha’s 
grief. It is that reality that must stand out at the end of the story. 
It stands out more effectively because of the abrupt naming of Martha 
at the beginning of 15. The author probably designed this sudden, 
unannounced shift in order to make the tragedy more emphatic. He 
makes a reader feel like this: * * Oh, yes—Martha! I am like the 

children; I had almost forgotten her. Yes, poor Martha.” 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 304 

Many teachers achieve great improvement in structure by showing 
students how to set up the plan as a framework, to announce the plan 
in the first paragraph, to announce each step of the plan as the topic 
sentence at the beginning of each paragraph, and to summarize the 
plan in a concluding paragraph. This way of working compels a stu¬ 
dent to keep from straying. If you come upon that sort of theme 
amidst a set of sprawling, formless ones, you find it admirable in con¬ 
trast. There is much to be said for teaching that trains a student to 
display the skeleton of structure, especially if he is backward or un¬ 
trained. 

Otherwise there is no merit in this ugly kind of craft. It is an 
advertisement that the writer has small skill. A theme built in such 
a way is gaunt and forbidding. Remind students that in living bodies 
the bones are always out of sight and that the same is true of live 
themes. 


THE CHRIST OF THE ANDES, PAGE 306 

If Chile and Argentina should be at war when the class sees this 
picture, the pessimists would have a good chance to make sport of the 
monument so ecstatically inscribed. There is the same kind of reason 
for ridiculing a League of Nations or a World Court or any effort to 
rid the world of war. A solemn oath is not a remedy for war; not 
even the Christian religion has been a remedy. Human wisdom has 
been quite baffled in its effort to find the way to peace. 


128 


WORKWAYS FOR 


So be sure that the message is not misinterpreted. The Christ of 
the Andes is not a guarantee of peace. It is an effort. Every effort 
may teach us something about the solution of the world’s most fright¬ 
ful problem. 


LESSON 43 

There is a very general supposition that criticism is not “construc¬ 
tive” work. A text-maker learns that his book looks forceful and 
“constructive” if he assigns a great deal of composition; a critic 
somehow gathers the impression that the mere directions to achieve 
beauty result in an achievement of them. He is deceived by a mere 
display of exhortation. 

We who work in classrooms know that improvement can come only 
by attention to the details of how school writers go to work. Writers 
and carpenters have to learn their trades by practice and not by criti¬ 
cizing—that is true enough. But no carpenter can learn his trade by 
trying to build a lot of experimental houses; he must learn, by fa¬ 
miliarity with thousands of details, how previous houses have been put 
together. His whole trade is learned—every trade is learned—by watch¬ 
ing the processes of building. That is criticism in the sense meant on 
page 308. 

The two stories in the Exercise are far below the standard of or¬ 
dinary school excellence, and so might seem too poor to be good material. 
But I have found that if students can readily see the faults in a 
printed theme, they are stimulated and pleased—that is, they are taught. 

“Restored Friendship” seems to contain parts of two plots. The 
first centers in a quarrel between Captain Smith and his brother, who 
are not on speaking terms in the third paragraph, but who have a talk 
in the fourth, which results in a reconciliation that is announced in the 
last words of the story. The other partial plot is the care of the light 
by the faithful Brown. We are kept in suspense; we simply find that 
Brown was equal to the emergency; and there we are. Why did the 
Captain’s “rate of travel become slower and slower”? Why did he 
start to walk? The story gives us no real pictures, no understanding. 

“Taking a Chance” may have one merit: the policeman’s appetite 
for lunch saves the boy from arrest. Otherwise there is no merit. The 
long description in the first paragraph of the difficulties of securing a 
license is not made to count in the plot. At first he does not worry 
over the town policeman, but it is a town policeman who pursues him. 
The giving up of the chase by the policeman is not realistic. The last 
paragraph weaves back and forth with but and though. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 317 

Paragraph 2 is really one of many invitations to narrow the topic. 
Ask students if they have ever enjoyed a theme that spread out broadly. 
Isn’t it almost certain that an interesting theme is about a limited 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


129 


subject? Any blossom, if observed intently, is a collection of more 
wonders than can be told about in a long theme. Any big snowflake 
presents an expanse of complicated beauties. When attention is limited 
to any small object, wonder and interest appear. For example, a box 
of chalk is a dead subject; the making of one crayon is rather interest¬ 
ing ; the composition of a small fleck of a crayon startles the im¬ 
agination; the life history of one of the microscopic animals whose 
skeletons are in the flake is a romance; a molecule in the skeleton is a 
marvel past all comprehension; and if you go on in smallness, through 
the atoms to the electrons that whirl thousands of miles a second, you 
have beggared the adjectives that tell of wonderment. (See Volume I 
of the Outline of Science.) 

The principle applies to all theme topics: Alexander the Great is 
worthless as a subject compared with the character of our puppy; the 
destruction of Pompeii is flat compared with the moment when father 
came round the corner. 

Paragraph 4 has a big message for students. Why have so many 
public speakers never learned it? 


LESSON 44 

When we think of what good exposition means for democracy, for 
social welfare in the coming years, we cannot find words to express our 
emotions. If we could declare the truth, it would sound overwrought. 
One phase of the necessity for exposition—that of popular explanation 
of science—was voiced in the Century for March, 1922, in an article by 
A. E. Wiggam, called “The New Decalogue of Science,” which has 
since been expanded into a book with the same title. His thesis was 
that the modern world of thought is being revolutionized by science, 
that the layman’s misunderstanding of science is undermining religion, 
and that intelligent people are crying out for exposition that they can 
understand, but that hardly any scientist is able to make an exposition 
of modern developments. Wiggam speaks fervidly of this inability of 
the priests of science to declare their message to the people, and of the 
need for spokesmen to intervene, to learn the gist of what science knows, 
and to translate it by good exposition ihto terms that we can all un¬ 
derstand. 

Such a consideration is remote from our direct class needs; we can¬ 
not stir students to composition by rehearsing it. My reason for writ¬ 
ing the previous paragraph is to show, by one illustration, how vital a 
matter is the power of exposition for our social and moral and esthetic 
life. We teach better if we are conscious, however vaguely, that we 
are touching the hem of the garment of great issues. The nature of 
exposition is very dimly apprehended in our age. Science does not 
know that it has anything to do with the formula of page 319: “You, 
a human being, are trying to be clear and interesting to some other 
human being.” The medical profession is only beginning to tell it¬ 
self that all patients are human, that their greatest need is often for 
human treatment, and that because medicine has become impersonal it 
is driving people to quackery and faith-healing. Why do people go to 


130 


WORKWAYS FOR 


war? After ten years of wondering and reading I have not found any 
exposition that answers the question. When the exposition is made, it 
will be clear and simple and human—and it will point the way out of 
war. 

“ These are but wild and whirling words, my lord,” said Horatio 
when Hamlet said that every man had business and that he, for his 
part, would go pray. We all have definite, everyday business in class¬ 
rooms; and we expect a teachers’ manual to talk business and give 
practical counsel about Lesson 44. For once, good friends, by your 
leave, let’s elevate our thoughts about exposition. Our teaching life is 
not all a matter of methods and devices. 


“Tricks Worth Knowing” in the Four Passages 

In No. 1: Beginning with “has no teeth,” because this is what 
people are likely to misunderstand and what they need to know first. The 
picture-making phrases like “broad, thin plates,” “split into thousands 
of hairs,” “entangled among the hairy ends,” “what his net has 
caught.” First describing how the whale catches his meal, so that the 
picture is before us; then explaining “the necessity of this arrange¬ 
ment” in the next paragraph. Making clear that the rush of -water, 
‘ * flowing out as fast as it flows in, ’ ’ would take away the food if there 
were no whalebone. 

In No. 2: First asking the question, which we have never thought of, 
so that we are curious about the answer. Using phrases like “that 
low twig,” “glittering in the light of our lamp,” “that drooping 
leaf,” to make the whole explanation seem a narrative of what is 
happening right before our eyes. Telling in the first paragraph of 
“something important to happen,” to rouse our curiosity for the 
second paragraph. Giving a vivid picture of the spider’s operations 
by comparing her to “ a fisherman winding up his line ’ ’ and to a tight¬ 
rope Avalker. Choosing a limited topic—carrying a thread from one 
support to another—instead of trying to tell all about web-making in 
such a brief space. Closing with “strong enough to bear her weight,” 
which is a fitting end for this 1 limited topic. 

In No. 3: Taking pains to make a reader realize what a meteoroid 
is—very small, moving freely for ages, “tearing away twenty miles 
a second.” Making clear the “terrific resistance” of the air to any 
body moving so fast, speaking of “10,000 degrees of heat,” “boil 
away any object which ever existed.” Closing by bringing us just to 
the last step—“see as a shooting-star”—and stopping there. 

In No. 4: Beginning by warning us that a real mystery is before us 
—“enigma of selling what one does not possess.” Using a “prepara¬ 
tory lesson” of buying a carload of coal, which is homely and easy 
to understand. Carefully taking only one step of difficulty at a time— 
buying shares of Pennsylvania stock to be delivered next day; then 
taking the next step, the borrowing of the shares. (The subject is a 
curiously hard one, and students who do not understand it after reading 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


.131 


this passage must not infer that the explanation is at fault. They can 
at least catch the general idea—which is more than many brokers know. 
One experienced dealer in stocks lias testified that only a small per¬ 
centage of men who daily “sell short’’ could give any rational ex¬ 
planation of the real nature of their operations; they have simply 
learned to go through the motions. We teachers are under no obligation 
to expound “selling short.” We are showing the admirable way in 
which Van Antwerp went about the almost impossible task. His way 
of going to work is clear enough.) 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 326 

The outburst of feeling in the sermon about Lesson 44 sufficiently 
explains what was in my mind when I put these Suggestions together. 

Surely there has recently been in your community some example of 
two speakers who furnished the kind of contrast that is shown between 
the efforts to explain Federal Courts. Use it and point the moral 
again. It is the law of exposition which Van Antwerp knew when he 
began (page 324) with buying a carload of coal. 

“Make yourself an expert” is a good slogan for stimulating the 
right kind of preparation. Refer to the professor of radio on page 172. 


LESSON 45 

It will not be hard to see between the lines that I have small faith 
in the huge formalities of a brief. Imagine Burke making such a big 
outline for a two-hour speech. Even his longest efforts could be skele¬ 
tonized in a few headings; a “brief” of the speech would be what 
he never thought of and never could have carried in his mind. Have 
the advocates of brief ever considered that Burke and Webster made 
oral compositions? 

I once asked a keen and successful captain of a university debating 
team what use his teams made of briefs. “Oh,” he answered, “we 
build a big brief to chart all the possible arguments on each side, and 
we keep it posted in our club room. But a brief doesn’t signify in 
writing any one fifteen-minute speech.” There you are. A fifteen- 
minute university speech contains about two thousand words. What 
about a brief for a thousand-word school composition? 

The five bits of advice on page 330 are an epitome of such wisdom 
as I have been able to pick up in observing and coaching and judging 
school and college debates during the past fifteen years. If I had 
dared, I should have put in a sixth that seems to me more important 
than all the rest as a practical guide: concentrate on one reason. The 
speech that thrills a judge is one which leads up by definite steps to 
one reason and one conclusion. But this fact, so obvious to me and so 
often exemplified, is not generally believed, and I do not wish to inject 
a disputed idea into a brief lesson. 


132 


WORKWAYS FOR 


LESSON 46 

Both of the examples of argument given in the lesson are likely to 
stir resentment in many students. That is the reason for putting them 
in. A concrete illustration of how resentment can be utilized is this 
experience when I was preparing the book: A keen teacher in school 
and college classes read the proofs; in Lesson 45 he found an outline 
of “It is right to deport aliens”; he rebuked me sharply for pre¬ 
senting the affirmative of such horrible doctrine; and he proceeded to 
give me an excellent oral theme on the negative. He had been stirred 
to make good composition. 

Yet you will see that the outline was deleted from Lesson 45. I 
sadly admitted that if a mere outline in a book stirred his passions so, 
it would probably put many teachers into an unhappy frame of mind. 
Such contentious creatures are we all that the mere sight of a lesson in 
composition rouses us to war—not about composition at all, but about 
the merits of the case. Perhaps some teachers have burned Theme- 
Building in the public square because it offers, as examples of composi¬ 
tion, an argument that Peary cheated and an argument that protec¬ 
tionism is wrong. So difficult is it even for mature minds to distin¬ 
guish between rhetorical and moral issues. 

Be cautious, therefore, about stirring up too violent a diatribe 
against capitalism by use of ‘ * Help yourself, ’ ’ or too much w r rath at 
home by your admiration of “Protectionism.” Remember that most 
people cannot distinguish between rhetorical skill and wrong opinion 
about political economy. You and Theme-Building are not teaching 
economics, but the gentle art of arguing. But don’t be too cautious. 
Fan the flames as high as safety permits. Flames produce good com¬ 
position. 

“What were you required to do?” asks the Exercise. Most of us 
know something of the importance of that question in every department 
of our school, but none of us can impress it sufficiently upon students. 
Readers for examination boards find that a large proportion of can¬ 
didates have never been trained to notice what the question is; though 
much is at stake and though the candidate knows the right way to an¬ 
swer, he may heedlessly take the wrong way, and so lose all credit. 
Most of us teachers of English—if I may judge from my own work— 
put too little stress on “What -were you told to do?” We are prone 
to accept a theme as a theme, without reference to what sort of treat¬ 
ment it was supposed to be. 

This girl was required to show, by a line of reasoning, that the mov¬ 
ing-picture theater is a benefit to her town. The first paragraph tells 
why the movies are superior to the legitimate stage, without the least 
effort to attach her remarks to the topic. Her second paragraph di¬ 
lates on the merits of the Weymouth and has only one point of contact 
with the topic—“children are safe and happy there.” The “amusing” 
of the children in the third paragraph and the “given to some chari¬ 
table organization” may be benefits to the town, but they are slight 
and questionable. The' claim in the last paragraph, that movies will 
obviate the need of reading newspapers, is so highly exaggerated as 
to make the whole theme sound insincere. What is more, would it be 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


133 


a benefit to train people not to read the papers? As for structure of 
the theme, the four paragraphs are four blocks of material, distinct 
from each other, showing no organization into one progressive argu¬ 
ment. The last words are the least convincing and the farthest away 
from the topic. 

Can students justify the statement that this writer “has by no 
means failed completely ?’ ’ They could have done so if the theme had 
been put before them at the beginning of the year and they had been 
asked, “Is this fairly good?” Few of them would then have made an 
analysis of its utter weakness. The fact is a valuable one to stress, 
for it proves that great progress has been made; and such proof incites 
to more progress. What would the class have liked about this so- 
called argument? Isn’t it true that the girl has made the Weymouth 
seem an attractive place with a good influence? If so, it is a benefit to 
the town. 


THEME SUGGESTIONS, PAGE 338 

Try to imagine a man of any importance in a community who did 
not covet the power of standing on his feet before an audience and 
speaking persuasively for the side of a question that he believed in. 
There are such men, no doubt; but have you ever seen one? Can any¬ 
one in the class find such a. man or woman during the next seven days? 
Don’t prophesy that a search for one will fail, but open the matter as 
a request; you can then retire if any peculiar local condition might 
make an adverse showing for the cause of oral argument. But almost 
surely, if students put the question clearly, every older citizen that 
they respect will heartily admit that he wishes he could argue in public. 
Any citizen who denies this must be exceptional, since one of the com¬ 
monest human traits is to feel flattered if we have an opportunity to 
address an audience; we should all like to be able to shine in such an 
undertaking. 

The desire for the power to write is more remote and dim. It is 
the power to speak that is most in our thoughts. Can’t some student 
inveigle an admired citizen into telling the class how valuable is the 
training in arguing orally? That way of selecting a speaker is perilous, 
for it might result in a flamboyant or insincere address to the class; 
people are apt to be hypocrites when exhorting boys and girls. It 
would be safer if you hunt for a person who will talk simply, giv¬ 
ing 11 straight goods, ’ ’ and who can be trusted to finish in ten minutes. 

Do you belieye that the coveted oral ability is best developed by 
writing? Students should be cautioned about a great and striking ex¬ 
ception. Many men, even unlettered ones, are .brilliant speakers; they 
never have written anything. The fourth paragraph on page 338 is not 
speaking of persons who have some inborn fire of oratory or who have 
had the patience and time to practice speaking for years. The para¬ 
graph speaks only of the average student, not gifted, who does not 
drive himself much outside of school practice. Such a person, who 
relies on school training, is likely to reach better results in structure 
by way of writing. 


134 


WORKWAYS FOR 


LESSON 47 

I need not announce that these nine pages of text are not an ordi¬ 
nary lesson, to be assigned in a block. The text will be used with better 
effect if taken piecemeal, in connection with other lessons or theme as¬ 
signments. 

Lesson 47 is a summary of the whole teaching of the book about 
the four (or five) types of discourse. We are not concerned with types, 
but with purposes—an entirely different matter. 

Probably you have thought me a good deal of a crank about plan¬ 
ning for ‘ ‘ those very last words ’ ’—compare * ‘ the last three words * ’ 
near the bottom of page 342. It is quite possible that I have come to 
over-emphasize that advice. But it works. It has grown up very 
gradually in my mind, from a beginning when I had no faith what¬ 
ever in it. I watched it grow and was as surprised and distrustful as 
if I had been watching an experiment in somebody else’s laboratory. 
All the while I could see it producing results. And I have a fondness 
for results. 

There is no new principle in this Lesson. It gathers together and 
amplifies the scattered teachings of previous lessons about being sure 
of our one purpose in every composition. Much failure in examinations 
in all schools is due simply to the fact that students have not been 
trained to ask as a preliminary, “Let’s see; what is the question? 
What must be my one purpose in answering?” (See page 345.) Some 
leaders of thought who want to explain have not learned to ask before 
they begin, “What do people not know?” (See the bottom of page 
345.) “Meet them on their own ground” (page 348) has not been 
understood by many far-seeing publicists who wish to steer people 
straight. 


Comments on the Exercise 

The purpose of “The Dreary Classics” ought to be to show some 
serious and sensible reason why the study of a certain few classics does 
not help to educate students. The greatest and most obvious reason 
would be that the study does not cause students to like literature. But 
even this might not be final proof; for the fault may be in the way the 
classics are studied, or another benefit (like added knowledge of litera¬ 
ture) may be a necessary part of education. 

The writer is careful to limit his theme to a few classics, and he 
objects to these in a persuasive way—not going to extremes, conceding 
that the classics have merit, but firmly expressing his convictions. He 
makes a good point (in the last paragraph) by questioning whether 
teachers themselves really prefer the classics. His descriptions of 
his feelings about three classics are made in such a tone that we sym¬ 
pathize with them and can believe that so much “compelled” reading 
may be a mistake. 

The great failure in purpose is that there is no appeal to any reason 
against studying the three classics. That is, he does not set up any 
standard of judging whether a subject ought to be in the curriculum, 
but weakly appeals to “would it do any harm to try excluding them?” 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


135 


The whole argument is against the “fourth or fifth reading’’ of Caesar, 
the “five or six times” through The Merchant of Venice, and the 
“always choosing” The Lady of the Lake. He is objecting to the 
sameness and narrowness and monotony of the list of classics. He has 
not argued the question of removing these classics from the curriculum. 
The tone of much of the theme is flippant and ironical; the writer 
shows no realization that he is supposed to solve a problem. 


A YELLOWSTONE TRAMP, PAGE 352 

This picture naturally suggests theme topics of the same storified 
kind that come out of the first picture of Marcella. If it* is used near 
the end of the year, and much more if it is used near the end of the 
second year with the book, the topics should have more thought content. 
The most childlike situation compels thought if we look behind it. How 
has the stag lived during the winter? How do all wild animals struggle 
for a living? The human race has always been engaged in the same 
struggle, and always must be; but Americans have forgotten the fact 
during two centuries of helping themselves freely from a continent-full 
of natural resources, where no competing neighbors made life uneasy. 
Now the ordinary human struggle for existence, as the race has always 
known it, is beginning to press upon us. 

That impressive gloom is a topic for very few students, probably 
for none. It merely shows how far we could go in other directions if 
we have a bit of imagination. It shows that a picture is not a corral, 
but a stretch of scenery. 


LESSON 48 

These seven pages of text ought to be useful to any student in the 
upper half of a second-year class. It is not for beginners, not for any 
student who is unable to wnite an acceptable theme. It is more ad¬ 
vanced, for polishing off those who are fit. 

Yet “polishing” may be misleading metaphor, for the subject goes 
far below the surface and is advice about framing the very timbers of 
composition structure. I have found this material entirely practical 
for students who have reached the point where they can assimilate it. 

Comments on the Exercise 

The Exercise contains one example of each of the four types of com¬ 
position. I will append my own diagnosis of the proportions. 

The first two paragraphs of “Speed” can hardly be called out of 
proportion, because they give us an understanding of the keenness of 
the rivalry; even the account of the Sunday-school class is useful in 
this way. Any criticism against the proportions of paragraphs 3-6 is 
over-severe; good suspense is created, and the description of the races 
is not too long. If the writer’s purpose was to tell of “the victory of 
X fraternity,” the last two paragraphs are too long, or are needless, 
because they say little about that topic. If the purpose was to picture 


136 


WORKWAYS FOR 


“the follies of racing,” the last two paragraphs are too short, since all 
the rest of the theme glories in our victory. We cannot tell from the 
proportions of the theme what the purpose is. Hence it would be good 
criticism to say that the great fault is the failure of the writer to decide 
what he wished emphasized. 

There can hardly be a doubt that the writer of “A Dreary March” 
intended to emphasize the dreariness of the march, even if his title had 
not said so; for half of the theme gives that effect strongly, and the 
theme opens and closes with it. Hence the proportion is wrong at 
three points: (1) in the second paragraph, which merely gives details 
of the disposition of forces for the march; (2) in the third paragraph, 
where the sense of dreariness is badly broken up by the two encounters, 
with the populations of villages and with bandits; (3) in the last para¬ 
graph, where “the country was of a more interesting nature.” Call 
the attention of the class to an instructive fact: an artist could make 
these proportions seem almost excusable by placing the material in a 
different order and by using different connectives. If he opened with 
the second paragraph, throwing in only a hint of the dreariness; if in 
the third and fourth paragraphs he had used concessive clauses, like 
“to be sure, there were occasional breaks in the monotony”—then 
the bad proportion w’ould be almost concealed. 

The theme about “Growing of Rubber” is too much a list of state¬ 
ments of fact; but these are all pertinent, are in good order, and are 
well proportioned down to the last paragraph. This, which amounts to 
two-fifths of the whole, is devoted to the unimportant detail of the 
modes of tapping the trees. The theme is an instructive example of 
failure to outline the subject and to plan for a significant close, instead 
or running artlessly into a. minor topic and stopping there. 

The first paragraph of the self-government argument (a third of 
the whole) amounts to nothing more than “much might be said on both 
sides, and I am first going to argue the side that I do not believe in.” 
The second and third paragraphs (more than a third of the whole) are 
taken up with conceding the strength of the arguments of the other side. 


LESSON 49 

The material of this “Lesson” is an assortment of different kinds 
of advice that have been needed in my school and that are all well 
down on the level of actual composition in an ordinary eleventh-year 
class. They are stowed together here in order to make previous lessons 
more concise and better adapted for B or C sections of classes. Use the 
material in small doses as occasion arises. 

There is no new philosophy about outlines in pages 368-371, but the 
line of thought and the illustrations make a different sort of appeal. I 
would call attention to the last two paragraphs on page 371; they dis¬ 
cuss a fact of modern life which is not taken into account by any text¬ 
book that I know and which is vital. The precepts that were wise in 
New England academics wdien stage-coaches were in vogue may be un¬ 
wise today. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


137 


If you could see the beginnings and endings of a thousand themes 
written in all parts of the country by high-school students recommended 
for college entrance, and could see how large a proportion of them are 
lacking in the most elementary skill, you would teach the Exercise with 
conviction and joy. I have thought it good policy to confine the Ex¬ 
ercise to the teachings of Sections A, C, and D, since the text that 
deals with outlines is a summary of a comprehensive subject. 

Don’t suppose that my animus against ‘ ‘ introductions ’ * and * * con¬ 
clusions” is a personal frame of mind. S. A. Leonard, the author of 
English Composition as a Social Problem, dreads them as much as I 
do, though he expresses himself rather mildly in his book. The longer 
I observe school introductions and conclusions, the more I believe that 
they are of the devil and are perverters of all good planning of com¬ 
position. 


Comments on the Exercise 

I. One set of titles might be: 1. The “Turn Over” Religion, 2. 
The Heart of a Broncho, 3. If I Were Lecturing to Students, 4. Why 
Hawthorne Should Be Read, 5. The Car House, 6. The Great Cow 
Question. 

II. Beginnings: 1. Fifty-seven words are used for a mere an¬ 
nouncement of what the subject is to be. 2. This is prompt and busi¬ 
ness-like; it is hardly too abrupt. It suggests that the writer is loop¬ 
ing back in his order—i. e., starting with the steel, going back to ore, 
and then coming around to steel again. 3. A prompt and direct at¬ 
tack upon the subject of “helping the sufferers in Europe.” 4. States 
the subject at once and claims importance for it—so far good. But 
the sentence gives an impression of blind verbiage with its “glancing 
over the means,” “think we shall all agree,” “ afford the most valua¬ 
ble methods.” 5. Simply a flourish, a pouring out of words with the 
hope of working up to a beginning: “we have given some thought; 
however, we have not thought enough; and now the time has come to 
do some real thinking.” 6. It is usually bad policy to promise that 
excitement is coming. We cannot see the reason of “we were to have 
an exciting adventure, for it was hot. ’ ’ The four sentences are groping 
for some way to begin. 

III. Conclusions: 1. A mere pointing back to the theme. “The 

three great effects” might be strong closing words, but they are spoiled 
by tacking on “mentioned above.” 2. The theme must have been on 
some such topic as “reveries suggested by a mountain scene”; it is 
bad judgment to close it with words that are equivalent to “so I turned 
my back on the scene and went away from it. ’ ’ 3. Closes with a mere 

pair of items, which have no relation to each other. 4. Weak reference 
to the theme, amounting to this: “If you have read carefully, you 
see what I mean.” 5. A first-rate closing sentence, unless “hope of 
rain” at the very end is a suggestion opposed to the topic. A safer 
order would be ‘ ‘ giving a hope of rain and deceiving the thirsty cacti. * * 
6. To say that “the furnaces were receiving coal” is to suggest £eing 


138 


WORKWAYS FOR 


close to them; hence the writer forgets the impression of “at a dis¬ 
tance 1 ’ which ought to he the dominant note. The 11 disappearing 
flame” could have been a happy inspiration for giving the effect of 
distance, but it is not used to good effect. 7. The last sentence sounds 
like good emphasis, but it is so unprepared for by the preceding sen¬ 
tence that its force is destroyed. 8. Type of a poor close of a letter, 
because it uses a trite reason that is not usually true—or, if true, is 
not worth mentioning. 9. Excellent close, placing at the very end, with 
humorous capital letters, the error that was supposed to be dead. 10. 
Could hardly be worse. To stop with “number of cups seemed to 
diminish 1 ’ would be tolerable, though weak; to go on from there by 
backing into the study of the mechanism once more is inexcusable; to 
close, after this added study, with “still a little puzzling’’ seems pe¬ 
culiarly witless. 


LESSON 50 

Very few of the boys I have taught sin by using pretentious or 
sentimental diction, yet it seems wholesome for them to know that such 
faults exist in the world and to see a few samples of it. They are thus 
forewarned against bad taste that might some time, under an unusual 
kind of pressure, be squeezed into their composition. The remark near 
the top of page 383 about school editors who fail to sound sincere has 
borne some fruit where I live. The use of trite expressions is a fault 
common among the most literal-minded if they have to stretch them¬ 
selves to express some emotion; and the most matter-of-fact boy is 
sometimes prone to pile up terrifying words if he has not been shown 
the contrast between them and the plain, honest words. 

“Pretending not to know words” is a peculiar trait of our Amer¬ 
ican mind today. It was not known in this country a generation ago, 
and I suppose is not known much in England or France. In one way 
we should be proud of it, for it is an honest fear of seeming artificial. 
Some women fail to recognize and respect this cause of a meager vocabu¬ 
lary. It is very real. If a woman hopes to cajole a boy from such a 
fastness of the social habit of his age, she may accomplish nothing but 
to make the boy despise all composition as artificial truck. Only com¬ 
plete sympathy and tact will dislodge him or coax him a little way out 
of his wordless retreat. 

Most students who read about genuineness on page 386 will see no 
meaning except “Don’t pretend.” Since they never do pretend, they 
will suppose that the page has no message for them. It has a message: 
Until we are trained, we cannot be genuine, because we cannot make 
our own selves appear in words. I have put this as forcefully as I can 
in the paragraphs of page 387, which are a peroration to a course in 
composition. Helen Keller could not be true to herself, but appeared 
to be an idiot, until she learned to use words. None of us can be true 
to ourselves in composition until we have learned the code by which 
an educated world judges us. 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 139 

Some Comments on Sincerity and Insincerity 

1. The first three sentences might come sincerely from a boy’s mind, 
for the question is “burning” and “momentous” to him. But “play 
on the stage of life ’ ’ sounds suspicious. The last two sentences are 
piles of words, which do not carry us toward anything. (The rest of 
the theme was a curious continuation of these generalizings that re 
fused to take a side or to say anything definite.) 2. If the idea is 
simply that “the retail grocery business does not appeal to me,” that 
fact can only be made absurd by garnishing it with ‘ ‘ from my heart ’ ’ 
and “unbiased judgment” and “all sincerity.” 3. The subject is 
perfectly commonplace and concrete—teaching a Scout how to give 
first aid. There is no excuse for “undergo the several principles” and 
“important to accomplish” (even if these expressions meant anything) 
nor for the whole pile of abstract phrasings that tell us nothing. 4. One 
expression may appear an exaggeration—“as remote as though it was 
on another planet. ’ ’ But this is a customary kind of emphasis and is 
not untrue to the feelings of the boy in such surroundings. The wording 
is all direct, concrete, true. 5. Care should be taken to correct one 
misapprehension that is common in American schools and that destroys 
faith in vocabulary-building—the notion that several long words in 
one sentence are affected. This sentence is not false because of such 
words as conceptions, suffice , illuminate. These are excellent words, 
useful in composition. But this writer has no purpose as he uses each 
one; he is massing them without any feeling for his actual thought. 
“Beyond a doubt” is not sincere, for it is very doubtful whether he 
could have named two of the “numerous other examples”; he was not 
really thinking of “examples of conceptions” (if, indeed, anyone can 
think of such things); the absolute construction “this being as good 
as any” is stilted; he did not mean “merely let one suffice to il¬ 
luminate,” but that “one -would be enough to illustrate.” He is not 
thinking of meanings, but of a showy pile of phrases. 6. If any stu¬ 
dent can show that any word in the passage is false to the writer’s 
actual meaning, he will do more than I can. Possibly two expressions 
are trite, terrible and seething mass; but all the words really help to 
picture the wild scene. 7. The feeling here may have been sincere, 
though even that is doubtful; it all sounds like a weak rhetorical fury, 
lashed by the hope of making a resounding paragraph. “Overwhelmed 
by the horde of self-evident evils ’ ’ is not to be laughed at per se; it might 
convince us if the rest of the paragraph were different. What spoils 
the paragraph is the evident ranting in 11 forming their ideals of soul, ’ ’ 
11 1 must rise up in rebellion, ” “ these little souls may be called 
upon,” “idealism will be a ghost of the past.” 8. This is an extreme 
example of attempting to heighten a commonplace subject by making a 
romantic background. Of course this writer has never been in the 
tropics Qr crossed the burning sands; she does not even station herself 
anywhere in space or time when she “turns her thoughts, as it were 
unconsciously, to the dimple of the universe.” 9. Any sincere writer 
would have been unable to say “well-known principles”; he would 
necessarily have named some concrete principle that was in his mind. 


140 


WORKWAYS FOR 


No person who had an actual admiration for the actual wisdom of 
Emerson could have thought of “the intensive energy which individual¬ 
izes,” because “intensive energy” does not distinguish Emerson from 
Dumas or Karl Marx or Carl Sandburg. 10. There is no affectation 
discernible; every word is doing honest work. Students may not be 
able to visualize “half figure of a man floating along in a sea of va¬ 
por,” but the queer effect would be clear enough if the whole passage 
could be read. 11. Any student who had actually known of such a stir¬ 
ring example of self-sacrifice could hardly have forced himself to cover 
up the actuality with this fluffy pile of vagueness. (Has any student 
known of such a case? I never have.) He hopes to be impressive by 
assembling some antique phrases: “prospective careers,” “during our 
formative years,” “indelibly impressed.” 12. Some students will 
think that Maeterlinck’s description is overdone; but no one has a right 
to such an opinion until he has carefully observed a swarm of bees and 
compared what he sees with what Maeterlinck reports. Every word is 
chosen for its truth. 


LESSON 51 

Teachers who are accustomed to the ordinary scansion schemes of 
“long and short syllables,” with the classical names of feet and meters, 
may suppose that I have presented radical novelties in this lesson. So 
it is well for me to give assurance that I have no love for radical ideas 
in discussing English verse, and that the Lesson contains no novelties. 
For a quarter of a century I have taught the scansion of Shakespeare’s 
and Milton’s lines by using the prescribed formulas of iambic, trochaic, 
and what not. My lesson starts far back of all such machinery of 
scansion, far below all such technicalities. That is where the beginning 
should always be made, because most pupils have hardly any conception 
of the first rudiment of rhythm—stressed syllables. Not until they 
can detect the principal stresses in their natural reading are they ready 
for any scheme of scansion. If any teacher can train a class to hear 
the normal accents in the lines of the Exercise, he may then go as 
far as he likes in formalities. 

My own choice is not to go much farther, except with small classes 
of selected students. And even .with them a discussion of formalities 
is likely to breed wrong ideas and to be harmful. Anyone who doubts 
that statement should read some of the learned books on meter and 
see what mental gymnastics the authors impute to the poets—e. g., T. S. 
Omond. The poets have left very little testimony as to what they 
thought they were doing when they made verses; the reasonings of 
some scholarly critics lead us to a: whirlpool of the subtleties of time 
and pitch; and most of the older treatises on verse have been colored 
and contorted by the theories of Greek and Latin metrics. The one 
outstanding fact for all of us non-professional lovers of verse is that 
the basis of English meter is the stress that is given in natural reading. 
Classes that go farther than that go at their peril. 

Do you care to read some small and sensible books about our meters? 
I will indicate the nature of .the four most suitable ones that I know: 
1. R. M. Alden’s English Verse is the safest one to recommend as a 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


141 


general reference book; its rather long chapters on the subject are good 
exposition, carefully planned by a scholar who is always cited with 
respect—for example, Bliss Perry says, “His views have probably in¬ 
fluenced mine even more than I am aware. ” 2. More conversational 

and addressed to young readers (though it is no child’s book) is C. M. 
Lewis’s The Principles of English Verse; the author was a thorough 
scholar, w r as himself a maker of verse, and gives the testimony of a 
mind very sensitive to poetical values. 3. Larger and more ambitious 
than either of these books is Writing and Reading of Verse, by C. E. 
Andrew's. The style is racy and natural, and the judgments are offered 
without any dogmatism or affectation. The book has been much 
quoted and is influential. 4. The Principles of English Versification 
(200 pages), by P. P. Baum, is the most recent book on the subject 
(i. e., in 1924). It is somewhat technical and academic, but altogether 
sound and informative. Bliss Perry’s charming A Study of Poetry 
contains a brief, non-technical explanation of meter, but most of its 
space and emphasis is used for higher matters. 

I present that beginning of a bibliography just as an indication that 
the Lesson is not based on personal opinions. But neither is it based 
on scholarship. It is founded firmly on w r hat I have found necessary 
and effective in the classroom. Some day I may yield to the tempta¬ 
tion to write my own treatise on meter, but this elementary Lesson is 
no part of such an undertaking. It is in no sense a treatise on verse. 
It is a way of bringing the average student up to a point where he 
might begin to study the structure of verse—the point where he can 
hear and chart the principal stressed syllables. 

Comments on the Exercise 

I will indicate the stresses that would naturally be made in reading 
aloud the quotations in the Exercise, giving occasional hints at the 
variations that are possible. The right kind of recitation on this Ex¬ 
ercise will welcome queries about other variations and will allow many 
possibilities beyond the normal scheme of meters; but in the case of 
all the normal stanzas the teacher’s aim should be to show the general 
metrical plan. 1. For one example, which will illustrate all, an intelligent 
reader of the first line might give a pronounced accent to when, and 
might dwell on the syllable as long as on there or snows; but the obvious 
scheme of the stanza, as Whittier beat the time to himself, shows that 
he designed alternate lines of four beats and three beats, and it is un¬ 
likely that he wanted the first foot to be scanned “there when .” Whit¬ 
tier probably felt the major accents thus: there snow's, bout, drift; win, 
winds, cold; hands, bro, grain, sift; knead, meal, gold. 

2. The second stanza (by Robert Frost) will illustrate the fact 
(known to psychologists as well as to us mere teachers) that unsophisti¬ 
cated ears like meter to be regular. The reason why the second line does 
not seem like “poetry” is that two heavy accents come successively 
near the end; a student is well within his rights if he objects to this. 
The syllables naturally stressed: like, get, way, earth, while; then, back, 
it, gin, o; like, go, climb, birch, tree; climb, black (?), branch, up, 
snow, white (?), trunk (this line can easily be made, and would natu- 


142 


WORKWAYS FOR 


rally be made a fairly regular pentameter by dwelling a little less on 
black and white; hence it does not sound bumpy if skilfully read); to 
(?), heav, till, tree, bear, more; dipped, top, set, down, gain. 

3. This stanza of Bret Harte is arranged in four lines of four major 
beats each, two lines of two beats each, and a closing line of five major 
beats: hark, hear, tramp, thou; (in the second line and does not re¬ 
ceive a full stress in natural reading, but can easily be dwelt on, and 
we can guess from the four beats in the line with which it rimes that 
the writer gave it stress in his own scansion) and, arm, men, hum; lo, 
na, hosts, gath; round, quick, larm, drum; say, come; free, come; 
(both ere and your might well be dwelt on somewhat by a good reader, 
but the voice slides naturally to her for the first major accent) her, 
wast, quick, larm, drum. In the last line there are three rather promi¬ 
nent minor accents (ere, your, said); scanning the line as having beats 
does not deny the force of the minor accents, but shows where the five 
chief beats fall. 

4. The stanza was written by Archibald Rutledge. The first and the 
third line begin with an accent that is followed by two unaccented syl¬ 
lables (or by three if en of darkening is pronounced); otherwise the 
feet have the accent at the end. The stanza is arranged in alternate 
lines of three feet and two feet. The accents: beau, earth, me; used, 
be; dark, rose, sun; stars, one (ev has a decidedly strong minor accent). 

5. The stanza, by Damon Runyon, has four lines of seven distinct 
beats each: wheth, stand, des, plain, heart, si, wood; winds, sing, lone, 
graves, suri, stars, good; tell, tales, wrong, life, speak, rest, way; men, 
lone, graves, well (though sleep has a strong minor accent), wait, judg, 
day. 

6. The stanza moves in alternate lines of four beats and three beats, 
though fresh in the second line is a very strong accent to slur over, and 
the nots in the fourth line naturally have emphasis. There should be 
no debate about these facts; for they are facts and should be welcomed. 
But the class can see by reading aloud other stanzas of The Burial of 
Sir John Moore what the general movement, the norm, is. The major 
accents: slow, sad, laid, down; field, fame, (fresh?), go; carved, line, 
raised, stone; left, lone, glo. 

7. There is no telling whether Masefield put more accent on “I” or on 
11 must ’ ’; all depends on whether he was emphasizing the idea of 11 must. ’ ’ 
The metrical peculiarity of the lines is the way in which the movement 
is made slow by placing strong accents together, as in tall ship, gray 
dawn break. Students, like many teachers, are apt to dislike this halt¬ 
ing, yet Masefield’s arrangement has been much admired by some and 
can be brought out pleasingly by a sympathetic reader. The accents: 
must (?) down, seas, gain, lone, sea, sky; all, ask, tall, ship, star, 
steer, by; wheel’s, kick, wind’s, song, white, sail’s, shak; gray, mist, 
sea’s, face, gray, dawn, break. 

8. The key to scanning the second line is in the last line, with which 
it rimes; we can guess that Tennyson passed somewhat lightly over 
gray and gave three major accents. If so, the beats are: break, break, 
break; cold, stones, Sea; would, tongue, ut; thoughts, rise, me. 

9. These lines are much more regular than most of the lines in the 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


143 


Idylls: so (it is not likely that Tennyson read “so when”), King, set, 
ban, broad; once, ei, side, trump, blast; shouts, clar, shrill, un, blood; 
long, (lanced?), bat, let, hors, run. 

10. These irregular lines, typical of the narrative passages in the 
Idylls , offer plenty of material for debate; yet there is not much ques¬ 
tion that a good reader would accent as follows: Prince, blood, spirt, 
on, scarf; dye, it (the pause after it causes the syllable to be dwelt on, 
though the voice may not “hit’’ it with real stress), quick, stinct, hand; 
caught, hilt, as (though it is not a full accent compared with the 
others), bol, him. 

11. Stevenson’s stanza consists of three four-beat lines, followed by 
a three-beat line: un, wide, star, sky; dig, grave, let, lie; glad, live, 
glad, die; laid, down, will. 

12. It is possible that Guiterman tapped out his lines in six feet, 
each consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one, 
thus: 


The spar|row nev|er strug[gled when] he found] that he] 
was caught 

(If some|what slow] in ac|tion he| was might[y quiek| of 
thought), 

But chirped] in sim]ple dig]ni ty[ that se6med|to fit] the 
c&se, 

“No g6n|tle man] would ev[er 6at[ be f6re] he’d washed] 
his f&ce. ” 

There is some conflict between the accents of natural reading and 
the accents demanded by such scansion, but that is part of the fun of 
the thing; the conflicts are not frequent or strong. 

It may be interesting to chart on the board the quite different scan¬ 
sion that can be made of the first two lines, and even of the third, but 
hardly of the last: 

The | spar row| nev er| struggled when he| found that he 
was] caflght. 

Indeed we can fancy that the writer wanted the three lines to run so, 
with five major beats to the line, and the last line to be a change of 
movement. 

13. McCrae must have marked the beats thus: Flan, fields, pop, 
blow; tween, cross, row, row; mark, place, in (though this requires a 
decided forcing of the natural stress), sky; larks, brave (though still 
has a very strong accent and must be somewhat unnaturally slurred), 
sing, fly; heard (though scarce must be given less stress than is 
natural), mid, guns, low. 

14. This bit of Whitman’s free verse will show what very irregular 
me ter is—indeed it is not meter, though the last two lines can be read 
rhythmically. The syllables naturally accented in ordinary reading: 
O, neer, joys; go, mo; hear, hiss, steam, mer, shriek, steam, whis, 
laugh, mo; push, sist, way, speed, off, dis. 


144 


WORKWAYS FOR 


15. Also from Whitman; after the first line the movement is almost 
iambic and can easily be made so in reading: night, prai; sup, o, fire, 
ground, burns (?), low; wea, em, sleep, wrapt, blank; walk, self, stand, 
look, stars, which (?), think, now, nev, re, fore. 

16. This is a bit of student verse from The Gleam. In the first line 
sad has a decided accent, but close observation will show that the voice 
strikes harder and dwells more on eyed; so that the line naturally 
falls into a regular iambic movement with accents on eyed , win, and 
stare. The more pronounced accents in the other lines: gaunt, ware, 
stand, way; star, mute, an; blue, plac, bos, bay; bare, save (?), sun, 
(beams ?) (hare and sun receive more stress than the other two, but 
the voice dwells longer on beams)] flick, wa, play. 


DAVY JONES’S LOCKER, PAGE 402 

“The struggle with the ocean” is an endless epic. The illustration 
that naturally comes first to an American student’s mind is Columbus. 
No topic is better. Anyone w r ho can visualize the courage of the voy¬ 
age, in such small vessels, obsessed by fears of the supernatural and 
the utterly unknown, has a new respect for humanity. A good reminder 
of what the voyage was in Clough’s poem which inquires, “How in 
God’s name did Columbus get over?” 


LESSON 52 

It will be poor policy to assign this Lesson as a whole. Use it in 
small parts, and don’t assign any part until you have found that it is 
needed. Examples: if you do not yourself care about a hyphen in 
compound adjectives, you have no use for paragraph 2, and still less 
use for paragraph 3; if your students never use ‘ 1 cowardness ’ ’ or 
“ drunkardice, ” you do not need paragraph 6; paragraph 9 assembles 
many facts in small space and cannot be remembered if taken in a 
chunk; the verb forms in 10 are not emphasized as for eighth-year 
pupils, but are treated in an advanced way for use late in a high-school 
course; the forms of lie will not be taught by merely reciting on them 
five times—they can hardly be taught. 

Paragraph 12 tells of a curious subject. The extra have is very ele¬ 
mentary ignorance of verb forms, yet it is not mentioned in elementary 
texts, and many teachers of English use it. 

Corrections of errors in the Exercise: 1. lie down. 2. doubtless; 
the impersonal they is not a real error, but is loose and poor here. 
3. besought, farcical. 4. no error. 5. hard. 6. had eaten, lay down. 
7. red-haired must be hyphenated; it will be curious to see how many 
of the class object to “I’ll bet” or the omitted that before there , neither 
of which is an error. 8. if I were, contrary to fact; sleep well. 9. cup¬ 
fuls. 10. no error. 11. hfter he had run away; worse. 12. species. 
13. ten-year-old boys; more sweetly. 14. cowardice. 15. this stratum; 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


145 


burst. 16. somewhere, were waked up. 17. oughtn’t we; really ex¬ 
pensive. 18. only son of the senator from Oregon, was drowned. 
19. a phenomenon, anywhere. 20. no error. 21. weaker. 22. no error. 
23. if I had only seen. 24. has the dust lain. 25. oughtn’t we to 
telegraph. 26. nowhere. 


LESSON 53 

Only a small proportion of teachers are emancipated from the sort 
of prejudice described on page 411. The sources of most of our 
ignorance are two in number: (1) picking up a statement in a text¬ 
book, supposing that it is true, and teaching it until it becomes an 
article of faith; (2) reasoning logically that a certain idiom cannot be 
right. When statistics are some time compiled of the time wasted in 
American high schools with errors that are not errors, school boards 
will stand aghast. 

None of us teachers can realize the danger of our fancying that 
certain idioms are “bad English’’ when they are perfectly good Eng¬ 
lish. For years I wasted time on a fancy about the past tense of 
dive; and I now have great difficulty in keeping my hands off due to 
as a compound preposition in which due is not an adjective attached 
to any noun. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that I had better 
keep up with the times and accept dove and due to as modern facts of 
fairly respectable usage. Some teachers argue that the intransitive 
use of graduate is wrong, and no appeal to usage as guaranteed by all 
the dictionaries will alter their conviction. I once heard a spirited 
appeal, by a man high in the councils of a state association of teachers, 
against as though; he said it was an idiom that was sapping the life¬ 
blood of pure English. Yet as though has been a literary connective 
as long as the history of our language is known. This man should 
know that the principal motive of the Society for Pure English is to 
protect the language from the whimsies of purists. There are teachers 
who abominate so as to, who will not alter their opinions because of 
quotations from a dozen makers of classics. No prayer of an English 
teacher should be made more devoutly and frequently than the peti¬ 
tion that the good Lord may deliver us from all such false doctrines of 
purity. 

If we teach on the basis of 11 right, ’ ’ we teach what is false and do 
not motivate students to care about right and wrong. If we teach on 
the basis of being “queer,’’ we excite a very strong motive for self¬ 
correction—and -we are in line with everlasting truth. 

Beware of stressing the vulgarity or horribleness of wrong use of 
words. Students report at home what we say, and parents are alienated 
by our rash words; also other teachers and officials in the school are 
branded as vulgar and horrible people. Keep the touch light. Say that 
usage is variant and that many of the wrong meanings on pages 415-420 
are often used by the finest kind of people. Especially I should beware 
of the words numbered “ 2 ”; regard these cases as rather bookish infor¬ 
mation, useful to have, but not of much moment. Aggravate is a fair 
sample: professors of English know the etymology and the literary 


146 


WOKKWAYS FOB 


meaning perfectly well, yet few of them refrain from the colloquial 
meaning of “irritated.” 

Many teachers do not understand what “colloquial” means in a dic¬ 
tionary. It does not signify that a word is improper, but only that it 
would not be suitable in lofty or impassioned utterance. Don’t is col¬ 
loquial, because it would give a conversational flavor to a line of poetry 
or to a sentence in an elevated sermon. Colloquial means acceptable in 
cultured speech. 

Assign the words a few at a time, and assign only those that you 
think will be beneficial. 

What do you think about shall and wilW For my part, I have 
given up the fight, because I cannot elevate boys above the speech 
standards of our last five presidents. I have seen in a learned journal 
an article by a professor of English who argued that our language has 
changed for the better by dropping the distinction of shall for the first 
person. I have put a few shalls in the Exercise. If you ask a class 
about sentence 5, and encourage the doubt about shall, you will dis¬ 
cover, unless you teach in northern New England, that an almost unani¬ 
mous feeling prefers will. It seems that shall 11 don’t sound good. ’ ’ 

The list of idioms objected to in Lesson 53 is the result of two 
processes: (1) Sifting out unfounded imaginings from the lists of 
“bad diction” ordinarily printed in textbooks. The sifting, you under¬ 
stand, was done in every case by ample assurance from authorities that 
the idioms were not opposed to good usage. (2) Adding those errors 
which are common all over the country, but have not been generally 
entered in textbooks. 

It took me many years to learn that all emphasis in the classroom 
should be on the right form. In explaining to an older person, whose 
mind is keen for new knowledge, we dilate on distinctions. In the class¬ 
room our problem is different; here we are trying to establish the one 
right usage in minds that are ignorant and that have not a very keen 
interest. More and more I have learned to leave the error unmen¬ 
tioned—even to refuse answers to questions about the errors—in order 
to drive home to the bulk of the class what they need to learn. 


Comments on the Exercise 

The following comments simply point out the idioms that are objec¬ 
tionable in the Exercise, and does not attempt to indicate the propor¬ 
tional emphasis that each should receive. Unless a teacher supplies such 
emphasis, the Exercise may do harm. For example: the “implied” and 
“exhorted” in sentence 3 are out-and-out blunders; whereas “en¬ 
thused” in sentence 1 is a matter of taste. There are cultivated makers 
of books who snap their fingers at all the textbooks and use 11 enthused, ’ ’ 
but there is no reporter so lackadaisical about words as not to be 
ashamed of “exhort a howl.” 

1. Wasn’t very enthusiastic about, but this duty was a strong influ¬ 
ence in teaching. 2. Was interesting compared with what. 3. Are 
applied, are likely to bring (or extort?) a howl. 4. Is composed. 5. Be 
afraid of. 6. No error. 7. Exclamatory such (which may be in good 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


147 


taste if intended to give a colloquial effect), I wish I could have 
afforded. 8. I should be (dreadfully? sadly?) discouraged, ended in a 
fizzle. 9. The. equipment for playing golf consists of (or, better, The 
game of golf is played with). 10. No error. 11. Into a bush, cat was 
much irritated or vexed. 12. Teachers take part in. 13. Made a fairly 
good score (but quite in this sense is extremely common among fastidi¬ 
ous speakers). 14. No error. 15. Was an inscription saying that. 
16. No error. 17. I should like, but somehow I don’t seem, or but 
somehow I can’t see my way. 18. No error. 19. No error. 20. No 
error. 21. I shall. 22. It came to be. 23. No error. 24. At the 
beginning, succeed or qualify or whatever is meant. Class discussion 
may reveal that every suggested substitute is lacking in the definite 
meaning conveyed by male good. That is the very reason why the 
new idiom has progressed so rapidly. 25. No real error. The will is 
correct, because the speaker is showing determination. Between every 
booh is entirely illogical, but what shall we say? Between all the books 
is just as bad; between each two books would strike every ear in an 
audience as an affectation. I have quotations from several highly 
respectable authors who have decided to be illogical rather than freak¬ 
ish. 26. Epitaph. 27. Wouldn’t the humor of the sentence be more 
humorous if Fuzz and Buzz were repeated instead of using the former 
and the latter? 28. Substitute almost anything for with respect to — 
as to, when I considered the ways. Why not omit such lumber alto¬ 
gether and say that my best chance of earning a few dollars seemed to 
be? 29. Has finished, exhausted or half dead or strange—or whatever 
the writer had in mind. 30. Would not submit to or tolerate. 31. Other 
wild doings there were. 


LESSON 54 

When we study a foreign language, we discover that the prepositions 
are extremely idiomatic, forming phrases that have a meaning which is 
independent of the literal meanings of the preposition and its object. 
We often discover in speaking our own language that we are not sure 
which preposition is idiomatic, and we know that the wrong preposition 
will make us “ queer.” In this lesson I have gathered the most com¬ 
mon misuses of prepositions as they occur in themes from many 
schools. It is useless to depend on any logic or any reasoning from 
the general meaning of a preposition, for a preposition has no meaning. 
We can succeed only by stating the particular fact about each particu¬ 
lar combination that goes wrong. 

The Lesson will remain a chaos to any student who does not follow 
such a program as that in the second paragraph of page 422. He should 
not try to remember the whole lesson. He should read it all to see what 
is said and should record what he needs; then he should study his rec¬ 
ord. Urge the class to study and repeat the right phrases; help them by 
putting all your stress on what is right. A little needless comment on 
‘‘once and a. while” may fasten that monstrosity in the mind of some 
student; what he needs is to see and to hear several times, on several 
different days, “once in a while, once in a while.” 


148 


WORKWAYS FOR 


Comments on the Exercise 

Errors in the Exercise: 1. Deals with. 2. No error. 3. Con¬ 
sidered this. 4. Said we should go. 5. With regard to the tree. 
6. Contemplate the fact. 7. No objection to (like is strictly correct, 
with an object, concern). 8. No error. 9. No error. 10. No error. 
11. No error. 12. Devoted to trying. 13. Give me no pleasure. 14. De¬ 
scribed the cells. 15. No error. 16. Omit old (perhaps use more than 
for over). 17. No error. 18. Omit about. 19. Get off the car. 20. No 
error. 21. Above in this sense is a fine old literary idiom, but more 
than is commoner today. 22. Different from what it did. 23. No error. 
24. No error; for in this sense is an established idiom. 25. No error; 
regards is a verb and is proper. 26. A big difference, to my mind, 
between. 27. There is no such idiom as to the blame of, though it would 
be very convenient here. To the discredit is possible; some entirely 
different construction is preferable. 28. No error. 29. No error. 
30. On the whole. 31. Resist paying. 32. Don’t remember anything. 
33. No error. 34. All students who like to “understand prepositions” 
will indignantly demand about or as to before the what clause; and we 
must agree with their preference. But this way of using the what 
clause after doubt has much warrant in literature. Cf. No. 37 below. 
35. Treats of. 36. No error. 37. No error. 38. Differently from 
what. 39. No error. 40. “To which we should give all the help” or 
omit the to. 41. No error. 


LESSON 55 

The lesson is for classes that have conquered most of the rudiments. 
Every item in it has been useful in the upper classes of my own school, 
but only one item is of elementary importance—the use of like. This is 
as much of a problem as shall. In 1903, when I began to teach in 
western Connecticut, I seldom heard the conjunction like from New 
England boys; by 1920 I heard it from all of them. To me personally 
the conjunctional use is unpleasant, even to show a comparison, as in 
“like they used to be.” Yet I have to recognize that few of my 
friends share this dislike. What to do? Nothing can guide us but 
our own sense of what will do most good in our community. We must 
tell the class frankly what the situation is and show that we are not 
puristic cranks. I think of three steps in applying a taboo: (1) Don’t 
use in your waiting a like that means as if. (2) Don’t use in your 
writing either kind of conjunctional like. (For the two kinds see (a) 
and (b) of page 434.) (3) Don’t use like as a conjunction in either 

speech or writing. 

Like is a good preposition—an excellent one—as in “He flushed 
like a guilty person. ’ ’ The error is caused by adding a verb, as in 
“He flushed like a guilty person would” or “He flushed like he was 
guilty. ’ ’ 

Misuses in the Exercise 

1-4. No errors; than in 4 is correct after more. 5. Should be no as. 
6. No error according to the fiction standards of the day, but hushed is 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


149 


freakish according to any other standard. 7. Such as I saw. 8. No 

error. 9. And all of them had a good time. 10. Don’t know that. 

11. The way the pretty girls do. 12. He explained to us the whole 
process. 13. No error; there is no dictionary warrant for the claim that 

further and farther have distinct meanings. 14. Preferred. 

to. 15. No error, for purred used in this way has long been accepted. 
16. No error. 17. No error. 18. Omit as. 19. The way the small boy 
does; the way is less formal and easier for pupils to adopt than as. 
20. No error. 21. No error; fine is the adjective after sound. 22. Weep 
should not be used before a quotation with the quotation as its object. 
23. So that I can see. 24. Looks just as if. 25. When I saw that. 

26. No error. 27. Omit as. 28. And promised more if there was need. 

29. Crisped is like hushed in No. 6. 30. The sentence would be correct if 
as were omitted; most students would feel more comfortable with the 
equally correct “is thought of as a real person.” 


LESSON 56 

There are no sharp lines to be drawn between the classes of blunders; 
the definition of barbarism, for example, is simply a common custom 
in rhetorics and is not the general meaning of the term in literature. 
Tell students that the three classes are only assortments for convenience 
in school. The needless words described under (a), (b), and (c) on page 
439 would not ordinarily be called tautology, which is “ a repetition of the 
same meaning by the use of different words, without any added force ’ ’; 
but they are most conveniently grouped here. “Prolixity” is a term 
commonly explained in chapters on blunders with words; it refers to a 
prevailing wordiness and repetitiousness all through a passage. 

The kind of emphasis that this lesson should have is indicated in the 
middle of page 438—“mortified if he discovers that he is guilty of an 
impropriety.” Compare the use of except, page 216, as an example 
of the chagrin caused by a blunder in words. Here is a strong social 
motive, the fear of being “queer.” 

The recklessness of some students in objecting to idioms with which 
they are unfamiliar would pass understanding if we did not know that 
their elders and betters do just the same - , thing. Such presumptuous 
ignorance deserves more censure than the dullness that cannot find the 
real errors. 


Comments on the Exercise 

Blunders in the Exercise: 1. No error. 2. The writer seems to 
have imitated the form of uplifting in using the meaning of uphold; 
the result is queer. The normal word would be encouraging, but this 
might not be true to just the meaning intended; the writer may have 
meant “tending to support.” 3. Utterly and entirely may have been 
used by careful writers, but it is poor tautology. 4. And utilize every 
spare minute. 5. No error. 6. Worsen would be a handy word here, 
but there is no authority for it. 7. No error. 8. The writer uses 
despondent to mean “causing despondency.” He might not like to 



150 


WORKWAYS FOR 


accept the word discouraging. But what would he propose? 9. Was 
awarded. 10. Omit however , sheep. 11.* Omit little. 12. Omit take and. 
13. Omit and etc. 14. In a kind of peremptory tone. Demanding , like sev¬ 
eral words commented on above, is a real effort to come near a certain 
meaning, and so is not to be laughed at. It is a good effort gone 
wrong. 15. Made me despair. 16. Omit immediately. 17. Grab hold 
of. 18. No error. 19. Omit however. 20. No error. 21. Omit and etc. 
22. Before it has aged. 23. No error. 24. Omit nevertheless , a sort of 
fool or pretty much of a fool. 25. Omit went and. 26. Burglarized— 
though even this form is frowned upon by the very pure, who would 
require “had been entered by burglars.” 27. It is easy to poke logi¬ 

cal fun at screeched straight and to require went screeching straight 
but it is likely that a jury of authors would vote against the logic. 
28. Omit people, to avoid the combination with popular. 29. Try to 
count—though quotations from good authors can be cited to justify 
try and. Students should be told that the use is one to learn to avoid, 
and that later in life they may decide to use it if they care to. 30. .In 
the garb. 31. Murk was used in this way by a modern writer of fiction 
who is an adept at coining phrases. He seemed to mean scud but may 
have meant “a hurrying patch of darkness.” These facts are neither 
here nor there in our work. What counts is to see whether Miriam 
Jonquil will object to murk without knowing in the least what it means. 
32. He began another kind of appeal. 


LESSON 57 

Some day an essayist is going to make himself famous by exploiting 
the subject of “The Slang Pharisees.” He will gather from composi¬ 
tion texts the solemn harangues about the sinfulness of slang, and will 
contrast all this ranting poppycock with the way professors of English 
literature dote on slang and covet the latest growths of it. He will quote 
the scathing words of Henry A. Beers, an American man of letters 
who was a professor of English at Yale for forty years and was noted 
for the refinement of his taste and the delicacy of his verse and the 
sensitiveness of his perceptions of literary values. He declared in Educa¬ 
tional Review for May, 1892, when writing about the new subject of 
English as a college preparatory requirement: “Schoolmasters’ English 
—the English which boys writing themes are taught to use—is carefully 
denuded of all peculiarities, and among other things which it holds in 
horror is slang. Pedants, prigs, purists, precisians, and all dry-witted 
and thin-witted persons naturally hate slang, because it is alive. But 
men of rich natures love slang. It is the wild game of language. It 
abounds in imagination, humor, strength, comes warm from the lips of 
people, and is the fresh product of the creative impulses by which all 
language was originally made.” 

Such raillery will have no effect on you if you despise slang. It 
is not quoted here to alter your opinion. It is to show how most of the 
human race feel about slang—especially that portion of the race that 
makes literature and that part that goes to high school. If you preach 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 15] 

against slang, you will antagonize every boy that you hope to win for 
the cause of better composition. 

Tell him how the lettered world delights in slang—he will be much 
tickled. Then tell him how the lettered world pities a boy who doesn’t 
feel the difference between slang and decent language—he will flush and 
begin to have the kind of feeling you want him to have. 

The lesson is about taste. It is the depth of poor taste to feel that 
our limited knowledge amounts to much as a measure of good and 
bad. We must be modest and amenable if we wish to go right. We 
injure students if we encourage them to sit in judgment and pronounce 
that everything which is unfamiliar to them must be “bad English.” 
Teach them to inquire, not to make verdicts. There is no estimating 
the harm we do if we encourage pupils, ignorant of the vast fields of 
usage, to peck at every phrase which offends their ignorance. That is 
precisely the wrong attitude of mind. We should never presume to 
judge unless we have definite knowledge. 


Comments on the Exercise 

1. ‘ 1 His face reminded Billy, ’ ’ etc., is an admirable sentence—unless 
some very severe person feels that “a face cannot have a soaring 
expression. ’ ’ Yet that -was exactly what the author had felt and brought 
out forcibly. 2. There seems no excuse for guess or gets to or go 
some in dignified writing. Yet the great majority of professors of 
English would use guess and gets to in easy conversation. Go some is 
of course pure slang. 3. Went like hot cakes is trite; so is by leaps 
and bounds. 4. This is almost verbatim from a newspaper advertise¬ 
ment of a book that is said to confer mastery of English in a few 
weeks; the pile of adjectives is as bad as the old-fashioned advertise¬ 
ments of a circus. (There, by the way, is a good illustration from 
practical life: circus managers learned that they had made their posters 
absurd by the piles of adjectives.) 5. Here are a good many startling 
words, and the author is evidently striving to impress us; but see how 
true to the facts each expression is. The description is of some naval 
cadets stoking furnaces on board ship. Pause at the items that report 
exactly the sounds and sights and feelings: ‘ ‘ Rasp, ’ ’ sang the shovels, 

grating, ribbed floor, clang, white intensity, withering heat, a ninety- 
pound bar under a hundred-pound clinker, eyebrows singed off, gloves 
smoldering. 6. A perfectly plain, matter-of-fact statement. Will some 
sleuths of diction object to down and atvay as needless? Such adverbs, 
not logically necessary, are part of the genius of English idiom; 
especially is this true of the dozens of uses of up. Down and away 
should on no account be objected to. 7. A sample of a dentist’s jargon 
in an article written to be a popular exposition in a very popular 
weekly. No one had ever taught him how comical his jargon is— 
especially since perfectly ordinary words would express his meaning quite 
as well; he has no deep secrets to convey. He says potent factor 
and untoward influence with just the same sleepy artlessness as he 
uses peridental and occlusal. 8. A fair sample of the curious way in 
which many students shovel in words when they gird themselves for a 


152 


WORKWAYS FOR 


lofty style: in connection with this matter, in reference to. 9. Nothing 
to object to, since the slang reports what these characters in a story 
said. If once over and cut that stuff were expressed in pure terms, the 
passage would be reduced to absurdity. 10. Some students may feel that 
the paragraph contains too many technicalities—gallate, basis, befalls, 
oxidation, weathering, oxide. And they are partially right. But in the 
main, and compared with the vocabulary that most scientists might 
have used, the passage is a clear and plain likening of ink to a steel 
blade. 11. Nothing doing is in bad taste when telling of a situation 
in literature. 12. Doubtless there w r ill be a chorus of protest that up is 
needless—and so it is. Yet it is also highly idiomatic and entirely 
proper. 13. All eyes and ears w r ould be absurd if custom had not made 
it proper. The passage is true to the facts described and has not a jot 
of affectation in it. 14. Stand for is crude in such literary company. 
15. If Kid Jerry is in a story, this is the way he must talk. Whether 
he ought to be in a story—that is a question for another kind of court 
to settle. 16. There are stilted, meaningless w r ords: propose, means 
whereby, with respect to. 17. The items of the description are care¬ 
fully adjusted to the picture in the author’s mind; they may be over¬ 
drawn, but they express no ‘untruth or affectation. 18. I’ll say he was 
is a slangy absurdity in discussing such worthies. 19. Has trite expres¬ 
sions, which no modern journalist would use except under pain of death: 
festive board, have in our midst—and possibly the delights of literature. 
20. Wee hit might be bad taste in a funeral oration or a serious poem, 
but in any style below the very elevated it is good idiom. 21. Poor 
hut honest is so meaningless that it is a wonder it ever lived to become 
trite. 22. Put across is now used so generally by serious lecturers— 
e. g., from Teachers College speaking to teachers of English—that I 
should not dare to condemn it. To me it seems trite and dull. But I 
try to curb my prejudices. Shouldn’t we all try to do that? 


LESSON 58 

If this way of presenting metaphors is strange to you, don’t adopt 
it on trust; for it cannot succeed if a teacher is not in sympathy with 
it. If the Lesson seems long-winded, give thanks that you have found 
some briefer way to present the subject. If the Lesson seems to you 
unimportant or above the stage of high-school composition, by all means 
omit it; it is decidedly not elementary. If it seems an unnatural or 
cranky way of going to work, suspend judgment till you have read the 
next paragraph. 

For a dozen years I slid easily along over a little chapter on meta¬ 
phors in a textbook. The subject was obvious to me and seemed 
obvious to the boys; they never appeared uneasy. Of course I noticed 
that the recitation on the brief Exercise w r as not satisfactory, but then 
few recitations are satisfactory. So I considered that figures of speech 
had been covered and went on to the next subject. About 1910 it 
began to dawn on me that I was sliding over the Lesson. I dug down 
into it a bit. The moment I did so I struck a rock; boys had no con¬ 
ception of what was compared to what. The very basis of any con- 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


153 


ception of a trope was—well, you see my metaphor grows mixed, 
boy-like, as I try to describe the boyish condition of mind. My feeling 
was as hopeless as if I had banged a spade on a boulder. Next year I 
devoted five whole minutes to expounding ‘ ‘ what is compared to what ’ ’; 
the following year ten minutes; the third year fifteen. I could not 
bring the light of intelligence to boys’ eyes except by putting before 
them one illustration after another. The parable of the mustard seed 
was the most effective one I ever found, because it is so extreme: 
Christ wanted to show vividly how his humble little band of followers 
could expect a great result from their efforts; he illustrated, compared; 
he said the disciples were like a tiny seed, insignificant now, but des¬ 
tined to grow to greatness. I found that cartoons were helpful examples 
of the nature of metaphors. I found that boys indulged in pure guesses 
unless they began with “what is the author talking about?” and 
followed this with “what does he compare it with?” Four-fifths of the 
class would vote that “the cold hand of death stalked into our midst” 
w r as a good metaphor, and the other fifth could not tell why it was bad. 
It took time and effort to make them see that the writer was talking 
about the plain fact of little Mary’s death, and that he used the ancient 
comparison of the fact of death to a human hand—death seems to 
seize upon people as a great hand might. Another writer could com¬ 
pare death to a grisly skeleton that stalked into our midst and destroyed 
a life. Either comparison is a proper illustration. But the combination 
—death is like a hand that stalks—is a screaming farce. It took another 
ten minutes to persuade boys that “my heart was like a cold boiled 
potato” w’as a reasonable metaphor, because it made only one compari¬ 
son—of my feelings to a cold, clammy, disagreeable chunk of repulsive 
food. No other way of going to work was ever revealed to me. My 
time was all too short, and I could not afford to linger; but no shorten¬ 
ing of the process was ever possible. I never could discover, though I 
exercised my ingenuity violently, any form of approach except to start 
at the bottom of the nature of a figure of speech. So this Lesson 58 
grew, against my will, as naturally as a stone spear evolved among 
savages. It is the best I could make. If you have a repeating rifle 
that is an improvement on my primitive weapon, tell the English 
Journal about it and help all us backward, stone-age teachers. 

A word about why the subject is important in composition. The per¬ 
centage of complete figures used in themes is very small; in that regard 
the subject is of little importance. But the “semi-metaphors” (pages 
456 and 457) are of frequent occurrence and often cause sad mixtures. 
I have never felt that a boy was fit to graduate from school until he 
understood why “a factor cast into the shade” is a mixed metaphor. 


Comments on the Exercise 

Part I of the Exercise: 1. The Order is compared to something 
that should be held upright and that should be cultivated as if it were a 
crop. 2. The feeling of energy caused by the scenery is compared to a 
liquid put in drop by drop (instilled) and to an atmosphere. 3. The 
attitude of China is compared to a keynote and to a point of view. 


154 


WORKWAYS FOR 


4. Our hope that Mr. Sexton would say yes is likened to a ray of light 
and to a bubble. 5. He is compared to a person sowing wild oats and 
to a person who comes out on top. 6. Commerce is compared to some¬ 
thing that we stumble on and to something that can be regulated. 
7. The work of the Y. M. C. A. is compared to something played and 
to a factor; a factor cannot be “played.” 8. Investment is compared 
to a heart and to a necessary part of a machine—as if a machine had an 
animal’s heart. 9. Alcohol is represented first as a ship that makes a 
wake in the water and then to a beast that leaves a trail. 10. Agita¬ 
tors are compared to people going aboard a ship and then to people who 
are determined to crush something. What could they crush on a floating 
vessel? 11. The War is compared first to a blot and then to taking a 
step. 12. The feeling of patriotism is likened first to a wave and then 
to something that injects; injection must be made by some pointed 
instrument. 13. The villainy is first compared to somebody who wears a 
mask and then to something that is colored by a stain which has soaked 
into the fibers. 14. The question is first compared to something both 
deep and heavy, which the writer could not visualize; then to a place 
where a wind blows—that is, a wind blows at the bottom of something 
deep and ponderous. 15. The feelings are compared to something bitter 
that is thrown into a shade—as if a bottle of vinegar were cast under a 
tree? The grief that does this casting is compared to something “sting¬ 
ing” (poignant) and to something that can twist. 

Part II of the Exercise : 1. There is no figure in the first clause; 
in the second clause the kick is called a “handling”—as if a foot 
handled. 2. The merits of the car might be combined in some way for a 
comparison, but they could not be combined into a standpoint; no single 
standpoint could be combined. 3. The figure is consistent, for mountains 
are compared to persons raising their heads scornfully, and to nothing 
else. But the mountains are made rather absurd by “defying” the 
lowly country beneath them. 4. Sails are well compared to mules pull¬ 
ing. 5. No figure. 6. How could a standard—some inanimate object— 
be “well off”? How could it be “guided”? 7. The figure might be 
called consistent, because his health receives the sacrifice of a demon. 
But who ever heard of offering up a demon as a sacrifice? To what 
deity would it be an acceptable sacrifice? 8. “Pouring out a curtain” 
is a queer process, but it may be over-nice to object to the expression. 
The chimneys do pour out smoke, and the smoke does become a curtain. 
9. Cuba is likened to a thorn and to something that “becomes a part 
of our flesh” (incorporated). Can a thorn ever be incorporated? 
Unless it can, the figure is mixed. 10. No figure. 11. Ardent means 
literally burning, and so the sentence says that what was burning was 
kindled. Strictly this could be called a boggled figure, but would never 
appear boggled except to a person who was sensitive to the old and lit¬ 
eral meaning of ardent. 12. The only question is about “putting them¬ 
selves in a new light.” Surely the writer did not have a mental picture 
of the women stepping under some spotlight which had not illuminated 
them before. If he has not mixed his figure, he has been helped by a 
lucky accident. 13. The action taken is likened to something touchable 
(tangible) and to a step. 14. A good figure; the lumbering operations 
on the vast forest are likened to the nibbling of small animals on a large 


THEME-BUILDING (REVISED EDITION) 


155 


mass of food. 15. The success is likened to something that is brilliant 
and that can plunge a person into gloom. What could such a thing or 
process be? 


THE APPENDIX 

Very few users of Theme-Building would care for any dissertation 
on the ways of handling the letter forms or the spelling or the gram¬ 
mar or the punctuation of the Appendix. If a teacher has always done 
advanced work and wants to see what this modern agitation for rudi¬ 
ments is all about, he should write to the publishers for a copy of the 
Pilot Book for Sentence and Theme, Revised, which will be sent without 
charge. It is a book of 272 pages that explains what the crusade of 
Minimum Essentials tries to accomplish, and why schools nowadays have 
to put upon rudiments an emphasis that was hardly known before 1910. 
It describes in detail the strategy of grammar that directs all the opera¬ 
tions of Sentence and Theme, and that is essential to a successful use of 
the grammar and punctuation of the Appendix. The whole subject of 
foundation work is thoroughly discussed in What Is English?, Scott, 
Foresman and Company. 












r 


ultje 

ICak? iEttgltalf flllassra 

General Editor 

LINDSAY TODD DAMON 

Professor of English, Brown University 


ADDISON AND STEELE— Sir Roger de Coverley Papers — Abbott 
ADDISON AND STEELE —Selections from the Tatler and the Spec¬ 
tator — Abbott 

AUSTEN —Pride and Prejudice — -Ward 
BROWNING —Selected Poems — Reynolds 
Builders of Democracy —Greenlaw 
BUNYAN —The Pilgrim's Progress — Latham 

BURKE —Speech on Conciliation with Collateral Readings — Ward 

BURNS —Selected Poems ) , , Marsh 

CARLYLE —-Essay on Burns | 1 V0L MARSH 
CHAUCER— Selections — Greenlaw 
COLERIDGE —The Ancient Mariner \ , _ . 

LOWELL -Vision ,, Launfal J 1 ™I.—MOODY 

COOPER —The Last oj .. *s Mohicans — Lewis 

COOPER —The Spy — Damon 

DANA —Two Years Before the Mast — Westcott 

DEFOE— Robinson Crusoe- — Hastings 

Democracy Today —Gauss 

DE QUINCEY —The Flight of a Tartar Tribe — French 
DE QUINCEY —Joan of Arc and Selections — Moody 
DICKENS —A Christmas Carol, etc.— Broadus 
DICKENS —A Tale of Two Cities — Baldwin 
DICKENS —David Copperfield — Baldwin 
DRYDEN —Palamon and Arcite — Cook 
ELIOT, GEORGE —Silas Marner — Hancock 
ELIOT, GEORGE —The Mill on the Floss— Ward 
EMERSON —Essays and Addresses — Heydriok 

English Poems — From Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Byron, 
Macaulay, Arnold, and others —Scudder 
English Popular Ballads —Hart 
Essays — English and American —Alden 
Familiar Letters — English and American —Greenlaw 
FRANKLIN — Autobiography —Griffin 
French Short Stories —Sohweikert 
GASKELL (Mrs.) — Cranford —Hancock 
GOLDSMITH — The Vicar of Wakefield —Morton 
HAWTHORNE — The House of the Seven Gables —Herrick 
HAWTHORNE — Twice-Told Tales —Herrick and Brueue 
HUGHES — Tom Brown’s School Days —de Mille 
IRVING — Life of Goldsmith —Krapp 
IRVING — The Sketch Book —Krapp 



5% Hake Englisly (Elan! 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


IRVING —Tales of a Traveller —arid parts of The Sketch Book — Krapp 
LAMB— Essays of Elia — Benedict 
LONGFELLOW —Narrative Poems — Powell 
LOWELL —Vision of Sir Launfal —See Coleridge 
MACAULAY —Essays on Addison and Johnson — Newcomer 
MACAULAY— Essays on Clive and Hastings — Newcomer 
MACAULAY— Goldsmith, Frederick the Great, Madame D’Arblay — 
Newcomer 

MACAULAY —Essays on Milton and Addison — Newcomer 

MILTON— L’Allegro, Jl Penseroso, Comvs, and Lycidas — Neilson 

MILTON —Paradise Lost, Books I and II— Farley 

Old Testament Narratives—R hodes 

One Hundred Narrative Poems—T eter 

PALGRAVE —The Golden Treasury — Newcomer 

PARKMAN— The Oregon Trail — Macdonald 

POE —Poems and Tales, Selected — Newcomer 

POPE.— Homer’s Iliad, Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV— Cressy and Moody 

READE —The Cloister and the Hearth — DE Mille 

RUSKIN —Sesame and Lilies — Linn 

Russian Short Stories—S chweikert 

SCOTT —Lady of the Lake — Moody 

SCOTT —Lay of the Last Minstrel — Moody and Willard 

SCOTT— Marmion — Moody and Willard 

SCOTT— Ivanhoe — SlMONDS 

SCOTT —Quentin Durward — Simonds 

Selections from the Writings of Abraham Lincoln —Hamilton 
SHAKSPERE —The Neilson Edition —Edited by W. A. Neilson 
As Ton Like It Macbeth 

Hamlet Midsummer-Night's Dream 

Henry Y Romeo and Juliet 

JvMus Caesar The Tempest 

Twelfth Night 

SHAKSPERE —The Merchant of Venice — Lovett 
SOUTHEY— Life of Nelson — Westcott 

STEVENSON —Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey — Leonard 

STEVENSON— Kidnapped — Leonard 

STEVENSON —Treasure Island — Broadus 

TENNYSON —Selected Poems — Reynolds 

TENNYSON —The Princess — Copeland 

THACKERAY —English Humorists — Cunliffe and Watt 

THACKERAY —Henry Esmond — PHELPS 

THOREAU— -Walden —B owman 

Three American Poems —The Raven, Snow-Bound, Miles Standieh-— 

Greever 

Types of the Short Story— Heydrick 
VIRGIL — Aeneid —Allinson and Allinson 
Washington, Webster, Lincoln, Selections from—D enney 


SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 

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